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Bird Is an Endearing, Ungainly Modern-Day Fairy Tale
Starring a tatted-up Barry Keoghan, the film resembles a dream director Andrea Arnold had that she only semi-successfully translated to the screen.
Bird, played by Franz Rogowski, is a gentle drifter in a skirt and a backpack whom Bailey crosses paths with in a field one morning and, after some initial hostility on her part, helps on his quest to find the parents he claims once lived in a building nearby. Arnold, who has spent the past few years directing TV and delving into documentary with her 2021 Cow, is too vital a filmmaker to produce something that isn’t compelling, and Bird features imagery and sequences, from the blown-out sunniness of the squat to Bug and Bailey blasting a punk song while zooming through town on a scooter, that burble irresistibly with life. Keoghan fares better as the chaotic Bug, dancing shirtless in his room by himself, singing Blur at his wedding to a woman he met three months ago, procuring a psychedelic toad as part of a moneymaking scheme, and being charming while also being alarmingly erratic.
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