Children who grew up too early, abandoned to themselves, families disintegrated and on the margins: it is a ferocious world in which twelve-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) finds herself living in the south of England and looking for hope for her future.
Andrea Arnold, British director, veteran at Cannes, three-time jury prize winner, returns to competition for the Palme d’Or in the wake of Ken Loach’s social realism with Bird. She follows her path of telling the story of the discomfort of contemporary society, with naturalistic commitment and flashes of poetry, returning for Bird to her area, to Dartford in Kent. Bailey’s mother is with a violent man who abuses little Peyton and perhaps also the other two. The little girl, with curly hair and African features, lives in a squat where she gets high together with her very young father (a formidable Barry Keoghan) who has decided to get married to someone the same age as her. The older brother Hunter (Jason Buda), conceived at 14, lives in another squat, is in love with a little girl who is now expecting a child and is in a gang that beats up adult molesters. Wake up beauty there is hope, it is written on the walls of those popular buildings and he has the features of Bird (Franz Rogowski), a bird-boy who mysteriously appears among the nature of those places where Bailey goes to take refuge and film with the mobile phone the flight of seagulls.
He’s looking for his parents. Because in the end in this precarious world, destroyed by adults, young people network in desperate need of love and family. From Red Road, Fish Tank, American Honey to Bird, Andrea Arnold flies over ugliness, literally giving wings to these young people. It is a coming of age drama that Arnold defined as “the most difficult of her career”. Last night, at the opening of the Quinzaine des Realisateurs, the director received the Golden Carriage, the prestigious award given by the French society of filmmakers for “innovative qualities, courage and independence”. 63 year old Arnold grew up with a single mother and had a “very wild childhood”, she didn’t think she would be a director nor was cinema part of her life growing up.
It’s clear why the long-awaited Bird “was a painful journey” that took her back to the places where she grew up. “Whatever happens, whether you like the film, whether you don’t like it, whether you understand it or not, I know that all my efforts here will be appreciated. The fact that I’m here now is a kind of miracle. My – he said last night – it’s been a truly extraordinary life.”
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