Andrea Arnold’s latest film, Bird, which premiered in competition at Cannes this week, is another poetic drama about a complicated young woman coming of age on the fringes of society. This time, our protagonist is Bailey, a 12-year-old girl (newcomer Nykiya Adams) who lives with her distracted father (a boisterous, karaoke-loving Barry Keoghan), her soon-to-be stepmom Kayleigh (Frankie Box) and her adorable toddler, and her half-brother Hunter (Jason Buda), who’s part of a local teen vigilante justice gang in North Kent. Bailey is constantly surrounded by people but alone and misunderstood; she’s angry and unsure of where she fits into her family or society at large.
Enter Bird, a mysterious stranger who appears out of nowhere, twirling in a field in a sweater and a long pleated skirt. He dances calmly in front of Bailey’s phone camera, which she’s pulled out defensively to film him should he try to pull anything creepy. He doesn’t.
He’s just saying hello. Played by Franz Rogowski with a sweetness, gentleness, and otherworldly strangeness, he’s hard to place, both for Bailey and those around her. Who is this person? Why does he live on the roof of a local apartment complex? Why does he stand sentinel, naked, on the roof each night? Is he a sort of guardian angel figure for Bailey, or is there more to him than meets the eye? Regardless, the unlikely pair begin to trust each other, and Bird steps in to help Bailey take care of her younger siblings who live acros.