There's a moment late on in Andrea Arnold's Bird in which a fox walks into a pub from off the street and briefly looks at the camera. Clearly computer-generated, the creature bears such a resemblance to the fox from Lars von Trier's Antichrist that we half expect it to open its mouth and utter the words "Chaos reigns!"
In the world of Bird, chaos does indeed reign. Arnold has one of the more distinctive backstories of today's crop of auteurs, having spent two decades as a presenter of British children's TV shows, the sort that were known for their anarchic, anything goes spirit. It's no surprise then that her best films are those that see Arnold work with youngsters, shepherding her young protagonists through an uncertain, chaotic milieu.
That's what we get with Bird, which might be unfairly dismissed as a rehash of her best film, 2009's Fish Tank, as the El Dorado to her earlier Rio Bravo, to make a Howard Hawks (no pun intended) analogy. Like that movie, it's centred on a young girl negotiating adolescence in a corner of working class England filled with small wonders and large threats. Once again Arnold has plucked a young actress from amateur obscurity in Nykiya Adams, who plays the 12-year-old lead, Bailey. The main distinction between Fish Tank and Arnold's latest is a volucrine magic realist flourish borrowed from Robert Altman's divisive 1970 oddity Brewster McCloud.
That element comes courtesy of the titular Bird (Franz Rogowski), a German-accented, kilt-wearing oddball Bailey stumbles across in the field she slept in to escape the chaos of her home life in a graffiti-covered squat. Wary of adults and quick to threaten them with cellphone footage that might expose them online as a predator, Bailey is initially distrustful of Bird. But there's something about him that draws her to him. In search of long lost family members in the area, Bird is a serene, calm and tender soul, a million miles from the loud, gruffness of the people in Bailey's life. He reminds Bailey of the birds she likes to film on her phone and later project on the walls of her bedroom while her drug-dealing father, Bug (Barry Keoghan), parties loudly with his friends in the living room. Desperate for distraction, Bailey agrees to aid Bird in his quest to find his kin.
Various other subplots duck and dive in and out of this main narrative. Bug, who is set to be married in few days, has purchased a toad that produces hallucinogens when exposed to the right type of music. After testing several genres (there's a Keoghan in-joke about 'Murder on the Dancefloor'), Bug discovers the toad responds best to what he describes as "dad music," which leads to the absurd sight of Bug and his dodgy mates regaling the amphibian with a karaoke rendition of Coldplay's 'Yellow'. Bailey's 14-year-old brother Hunter (Jason Buda) runs with a gang of self-described vigilantes who attack alleged abusers for online content, and he's just gotten his girlfriend pregnant. Bailey's estranged mother (Jasmine Jobson) lives in a crack den with Bailey's three younger sisters, and is in an abusive relationship with violent scouser Skate (James Nelson-Joyce). We see these subplots through the eyes of Bailey, who either shrugs them off or decides she needs to intervene, the latter urge setting up an inevitable Slingblade-esque showdown between Bird and Skate.
Bird may be explicitly influenced by Ken Loach's classic of social realism Kes, but Arnold is never patronising to her working class characters in the manner Loach is often guilty of. Arnold has a clear affection for this rough and tumble milieu but she's honest about its flaws, about the dangers it poses to women, children and animals (perhaps the most disturbing sight in Bird is that of a dog left for dead in the crack den's garbage-filled front yard). To borrow a line from Night of the Hunter, "It's a hard world for little ones."
In Bailey we're given a hopeful figure, one who is aware of the toughness of her world but hasn't allowed herself to become hardened by it. She acts tough at times and her stoop suggests the weight of the world is pressing its heavy hands on her shoulders, but in the way she looks at animals we can tell she's a sensitive soul.
Adams is as revelatory as the young Katie Jarvis was in Fish Tank, present in almost every frame of the film and anchoring the drama even in the moments when it threatens to lose itself to mawkishness or misjudged magic realism. With his oddly never remarked upon lispy German brogue, Rogowski is suitably enigmatic, the actor returning to his trademark tenderness after being cast against type as an utter cad in Ira Sachs' Passages. Keoghan is undeniably charming as Bailey's tracksuited trainwreck of a father, though his accent crosses the Irish sea more times than a Dublin to Liverpool ferry. Arnold's talent for finding just the right amateurs is repeated once again with a supporting cast who convince us to a man and woman that they belong to this world of leopard print and neck tattoos.
Bird never quite reaches the heights of Fish Tank, and the recent trend of British social realist dramas adding unconvincing magic realist touches (see also Hoard and Scrapper) is one I'd like to see come to an end. But Arnold's latest is so filled with exuberant adolescent energy that you can't help but get wrapped up in its messy charms, and in Adams we're witnessing a starling hatch from her shell.
Directed by: Andrea Arnold
Starring: Nykiya Adams, Franz Rogowski, Barry Keoghan, Jason Buda
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