We catch up with the latest from Andrea Arnold and a short she made 22 years ago.
BIRD (A) - Andrea Arnold -- returning to her working-class roots and a coming-of-age theme she has patented -- comes into her own as a visual storyteller with this crushingly authentic tale of a week in the life of a 12-year-old girl navigating poverty and finding her path.
Nykiya Adams stars as the adolescent Bailey, who is told that her father, Bug (Barry Keoghan), barely an adult himself, plans to marry his girlfriend of three months, Kayleigh (Frankie Box), in exactly a week. Bug also has a teenage son that he had at 14 from another mother. That half-brother of Bailey's, Hunter (Jason Buda), is pining for his girlfriend, Moon, who will end up pregnant, pitting Hunter against her parents.
But it is Bailey who is the center of the story. She is frustrated living in squalor with Bug along with Kayleigh and Kayleigh's toddler daughter, and she defiantly resists committing to wearing the ugly bridesmaid outfit picked out for her and impetuously cuts her beautiful locks short. She also meets an odd duck named Bird (Franz Rogowski), whose gentle qualities could be considered spiritual, if not magical. Early on he spends days perched on the roof of a nearby building, birdlike.
Bailey is a caretaker -- she looks out for another set of three half-siblings that live nearby with their mother -- and an explorer who strives toward adult adventures. She also helps the naive Bird hunt down the parents who abandoned him when he was young.
Arnold grounds this in the grimy world of the British underclass. Bug is a dreamer whose latest get-rich scheme is to sell the slime from a toad as a hallucinogenic. He discovers that the creature is more likely to produce the valuable slime if Bug plays mainstream music as opposed to the punk that he and his pals grew up on. It makes for a wonderful soundtrack, ranging from the urgent Fontaines D.C. to the elevator calm of Coldplay, with many singalongs featuring his bro pals.
Arnold is in command of the visuals at every turn. You may shudder at how genuine the enveloping poverty and menace is. She invents unforgettable images -- whether it's Bird perched on that roof or Kayleigh curled up in bed assuring Bailey that she'll survive her first period or the handheld camera that races along with Bailey and Bug on their adventures. And then there is the fantasy and whimsy that comes out of nowhere, a stark contrast to Bailey's reality, as Bird eventually lives up to his name.
It's hard to catalog all the elements that Arnold juggles and mixes into a moving narrative about human connection grounded in the natural and supernatural worlds. I wanted to knock a half-grade off for the fantasy elements, but I have to admit that Arnold is working at an elevated level. "Bird" is a wonder.
WASP (2003) (B+) - Zoe is a harried mother of four young children, including a baby, who yearns for a love life. is gruff and broke, prone to conflicts with the neighbors; several times her daughters complain that they haven't eaten a meal in days.
When Zoe (Natalie Press) meets an old beau, Dave (Danny Dyer), on the street, four little ones in tow, she lies and tells him that she is just babysitting, and she makes a date at the pub that night. She drags the kids along to the date, making them kill time outside while she flirts inside with Dave.
Twenty-six minutes is a perfect amount of time to play out this arc, as if it were an episode of a dark sitcom. The wasp of the title shows up to bookend the film. In the first instance, Zoe frees it out a window of their flat; the second appearance presents a bit of peril that brings events to the boiling point.
Press is compelling as the overburdened still-too-young mum who cleans up super-cute for her date at the pub, and while you yearn along with her in sympathy, her recklessness is alarming, and you might tsk along with the neighbors. Arnold's camera nervously flits about her and the kids, jangling the viewers' nerves along with Zoe's.
BONUS TRACKS
Let's delve into "Bird's" soundtrack. Here is "A Hero's Death" from Fontaines D.C.:
Coldplay's "Yellow" recurs during multiple karaoke scenes as a sort of anthem for the toad crew:
And, from a pivotal point near the film's climax, "Lucky Man" by the Verve:
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