Bird, Andrea Arnold’s new feature film, is a gritty and intimate slice of the life of Bailey, an impoverished twelve-year-old in Kent. Bailey lives with her 28-year-old dad Bug, – himself covered in tattoos of six-legged, eight-legged, and thousand-legged creatures – played by Barry Keoghan. They live in a shabby and probably abandoned apartment building with Bug’s new girlfriend, her toddler daughter, and Bailey’s half-brother Hunter. Her chaotic life takes an interesting turn upon the mysterious arrival of Bird, a skirt-clad wanderer who takes care of and is kind to Bailey (and everyone he meets), unlike anyone else in her life.
Bailey takes lots of videos on her iPhone, and these are spliced into the film, both as though she were screencasting her portrait device onto the cinema screen, and as she projects them onto her wall to rewatch for herself. There are a few brief flashbacks to earlier events, showing us what’s being replayed and dwelled on behind Bailey’s morose eyes. But Bailey’s portrait smartphone videos of natural goings-on in the world around her – a fly crawling up the window, a butterfly resting on her hand, a seagull wheeling way overhead – betray a deeper observation than her sullen and unintelligent pre-teen vocabulary suggests. These observations also mirror Bird’s lofty gaze from his precarious perch on the apartment roof of the streets below, and of their daily characters. Interestingly, when not filming the public for leverage or personal safety, Bailey’s documentation often features bugs, and birds.
Arnold’s new film is beautiful, sad, and striking, with an unsteady camera following our insecure protagonist.
Bird will have its Australian release on February 20th.