29/13
Bailey seeks attention and adventure elsewhere
Synopsis
Bailey lives with her brother Hunter and her father Bug, who is raising them alone in a shack in North Kent. Bug doesn’t have much time to devote to them. Barry Keoghan dropped out of Gladiator II (2024) to star in this film instead..
Edited in Fontaines DC: Bug (2024)
'Bird' has similarities to Andrea Arnold’s previous film “Fishtank”; where an estranged teenage girl puts herself in grave danger while trying to escape loneliness and domestic dysfunction. In this new work, Arnold focuses on Bailey, a pre-teen who lives in a chaotic huddle with her father and an older brother. Her father, Bug, plans to marry his strange new girlfriend, while her distraught mother lives nearby in even more squalid conditions with a violently abusive boyfriend, a crowd of Bailey’s younger siblings, and a long-suffering puppy , named Dave.
Following an argument with Bug, Bailey follows a gang of street kids involved in random crime
None of the adults in her universe seem able to offer much guidance, leaving Bailey to chart her own course. After evading the police, sleeping in a field and being woken by a horse, she meets a kilt-wearing stranger named Bird. This eccentric itinerant 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 gives a brave and convincing performance in the title role, while Bailey’s pursuit of Bird’s search is mixed with other digressions, distractions and sub-plots. Her seemingly aimless wanderings eventually reach a revelatory moment, which is depicted in an extraordinary passage where the film briefly strays from gritty realism and enters the realm of the fantastic. Somehow, Arnold pulls off this trick, turning her urban drama into an intense and memorable fable.