TIFF 2024 Review: Bird – “Nykiya Adams is an absolute powerhouse.”

“Mum said I was born looking for trouble,” Bailey (Nykiya Adams) says in Andrea Arnold‘s latest, Bird.  And yet, she’s not truly hoping for trouble, she just kind of gets caught up in it due to circumstance.  Her brother, Hunter (Jason Buda) runs around with a group of teenage boys acting as a kind of vigilante group.  Her father, Bug (Barry Keoghan), who is covered in insect tattoos, does little to offer stability.  His latest ‘get rich quick’ scheme involves harvesting hallucinogenic slime from a toad.  Bailey’s aforementioned mother lives with an abusive deadbeat with the rest of her siblings who clearly adore and need Bailey.

But Bailey has needs too.  She’s on a precipice of puberty (thank you for showing a realistic period!), lonely and trying to deal with the fact that Bug is going to marry his girlfriend of three months.  As she lays on a mattress on the floor of their graffitied tenement, she looks at the videos she’s taken on her phone of birds soaring, butterflies, a horse – anything that seems to symbolize freedom.   She is in need of love, acceptance, attention and a home that offers her safety.

One day, after a row with her father becomes physical, Bailey bolts and ends up falling asleep in a field.  Upon awakening, she meets Bird (Franz Rogowski) a strange but gentle soul who has lost his way and his family.  While Bailey’s street smarts tell her to be wary of this man, she eventually finds a commonality with him as she helps her new friend find his estranged father.  Bird offers Bailey the companionship and love she craves, and eventually also protection.  They help each other find themselves.

Andrea Arnold is no stranger to coming-of-age stories, and with similar themes, Bird could almost be considered part of a trilogy alongside Fish Tank (2009) and American Honey (2016, her last narrative feature).  Yet, this is the first time that Arnold has played around with magical realism which factors heavily in the third act.  Don’t worry though, Arnold doesn’t just come out of left field with it, there are breadcrumbs dropped along the way.

Most of them come in the form of Rogowski’s nuanced performance.  Looking like a hybrid of Hugh Dancy and Joaquin Phoenix, Rogowski lends a sensitivity to Bird that is essential, while at the same time giving the audience hints that nothing is quite as it seems.  It’s important to the viewer that Bailey never feels in danger when she’s with Bird, and that it’s a relationship that becomes tender and protective.

In her very first screen credit, Nykiya Adams is an absolute powerhouse.  As Bailey she is raw, and honest.  She is a kid forced to grow up too fast, just like Bug is a ‘father’ and a man who never had a childhood.  She more than holds her own against Keoghan, who seems to have a blast in this role, even eventually showing a tender side you don’t usually see.  Whether he is singing Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ to a toad in the hopes of a payday, or careening down the streets on his electric scooter screaming out ‘Too Real’ by the Fontaines D.C., Keoghan is more than game.  And, if you listen closely you can even hear a mention of ‘Murder on the Dancefloor,’ a fun little reference to Keoghan’s Saltburn dance.

The hard part about Bird is that, even though it comes in just under two hours, it feels longer than that.  Audiences may also find some of the fantasy elements hard to adapt to, but if you’re game to go along for the ride, it comes with its rewards.  While it did have moments where it felt the pacing was dragging, overall Bird is a movie that gets under your skin.  It’s ultimately an uplifting fable that leaves you with an overwhelming sense that everything is going to turn out just fine.  It leaves you with a sense of peace, just like watching birds soar.

Bird premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.  It had its Canadian Premiere September 7, 2024 at the Toronto International Film Festival.  For more information head to tiff.net

SPOILER ALERT ANIMAL WARNING:

Note – for those sensitive to sequences involving animals, there is a dog killed off screen but shown dead (Spoiler alert he later comes back! So do not fret!)