Come on, who’ll see you again? Subscriber to the jury prize (2006, 2008 and 2016), the British Andrea Arnold returns to Competition at Cannes 77 with Birdcontinuing in the sociological analysis with the benefit of visual invention.
Always generous, moreover, devoted in giving power to the characters, guiding lights of as many stories, Arnold has been instinctual since the beginning, Red Rd (2006) e Fish Tank (2008), and at the same time understood the ideological vigor and political value of his cinema, which starts from Loach (story) and arrives at a very different (trans-)figuration (story), accompanying the marginality of the characters with the centrality of the style, although in the naturalist way.
So after the unsuccessful transfer of American Honey (2016) and the underrated but very human Cow – the daily life of a dairy cow – from 2022, with Bird – and we are at two consecutive animals… – circumscribes the dynamic, not too dysfunctional and very emotional universe of twelve-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams), her father Bug (Barry Keoghan , usually a champion) and his brother (Jason Buda) in a squat in northern Kent: Bailey’s calm, so to speak, is disturbed by the arrival of the mysterious Bird (Franz Rogowski), who seeks news of the parents who gave him up for died…
Direction of the actors that makes freedom a code and spontaneity imperative, a camera that – Bailey’s smartphone is the second unit – does not claim authority but (of) volatile skies and a supplement to anthropological investigation, writing that professes centripetal faith, giving the first floor ai misfitBird proves empathetic and analytical, caressing and excruciating, including teenage vigilantes, lysergic toads, “daddy’s music” (Yellow by Coldplay at karaoke…) and pregnancies, domestic violence and mere survival.
Everything from the heart but without giving up lucidity, finding in iteration the dramaturgical clearing for the incursion of fantasy à la Birdman – and we’ll stop here, let’s say that the special effects of that one were better.
We’ve seen it before, Birdand perhaps the feathery drift leads to it being stolen, but the actors are perfect, the hand solid and the optics supportive: is the fourth jury prize coming?
