Bird 2024 HC.10Bit Magnet

34/44

Bailey seeks attention and adventure elsewhere

Story

Bailey lives with her brother Hunter and her father Bug, who is raising them alone in a squat in north Kent. Bug doesn’t have much time for them. Barry Keoghan dropped out of Gladiator II (2024) to star in this film instead.

Montage in Fontaines DC: Bug (2024)

‘Bird’ bears similarities to Andrea Arnold’s previous film, ‘Fishtank’, in which an alienated teenage girl puts herself in grave danger trying to escape loneliness and domestic dysfunction. In this new work, Arnold focuses on pre-teen Bailey who lives in a chaotic squat with her father and an older brother. Her father Bug plans to marry his eccentric new girlfriend, while her troubled mother lives nearby in even more squalid conditions with an abusive and violent boyfriend, a slew of Bailey’s younger siblings and a long-suffering puppy called Dave.

After a run-in with Bug, Bailey follows a gang of street kids into random crime

None of the adults in her world seem able to offer much guidance, leaving Bailey to chart her own course. After evading the police, sleeping in a field, and being woken up by a horse, she meets a kilted stranger named Bird. This eccentric wanderer was born in the area, raised elsewhere, and is trying to find a father he barely remembers.

After some hesitation, Bailey decides to help him

Nykiya Adams delivers a courageous and compelling performance in the title role as Bailey’s pursuit of Bird is intertwined with other digressions, distractions, and subplots. Her seemingly aimless wanderings eventually culminate in a telling moment, captured in an extraordinary passage where the film briefly departs from stark realism into the realm of fantasy. Somehow, Arnold pulls off this sleight of hand, transforming her urban drama into an intense and memorable fable.