BIRD
Directed & written by Andrea Arnold
BBC Film
DIRECTOR ANDREA ARNOLD has been on the indie circuit for years, winning an Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2005 and notable Jury Prize awards at Cannes. She attracts up-and-coming and newly arrived actors to her projects. Her new film, Bird, which she both wrote and directed, premiered at NewFest, New York City’s annual LGBTQ+ film festival. It’s an unsparing yet sympathetic look into the hardscrabble life of the tough but vulnerable twelve-year-old Bailey, played by newcomer Nykiya Adams, an interracial girl who more-or-less presents as a boy, and her rambunctious father, “Bug,” played with screen-stealing gusto by the Irish actor Barry Keoghan, who recently rocketed to fame in Saltburn. They live in a “squat” in north Kent, a shabby flat whose walls are screaming with graffiti. This pairs up well with Bug’s tatted face, chest, and arms, which advertise his outsize emotional temperatures. He both loves Bailey and demands her fealty.
Allen Ellenzweig, a longtime contributor to these pages, is the author of George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye (Oxford Univ. Press, 2021).
