A raw fable about looking up instead of feeling down, “Bird” shows writer-director Andrea Arnold back in a familiar milieu of cramped youth on the periphery , making do with what little is available, seesawing between explosive anger and playful respite. And yet this time, her tale, built around a tough, observant 12-year-old named Bailey (newcomer Nykiya Adams), is shot through with a hopeful streak that feels like a new register for Britain’s doyenne of social realism. You see it in the exhilarating speed of a motorscooter tearing through blighted and beautiful Kent, and, a little later, in hot-headed Bailey running from the chaos of her life living in a graffiti-strewn squat with her too-young dad Bug (a tatted-out, laddish Barry Keoghan ) and seeking acceptance in a roving vigilante gang.
But it’s also present in the luxurious pace of the sweeping Blur ballad “The Universal,” which Bug plays incessantly in lovestruck preparation for his upcoming wedding to a cheery gal, Kayleigh (Frankie Box). She’s plenty friendly but somewhat new to the scene, neither Bailey’s mom nor that of her older brother Hunter (Jason Buda). There’s also a toddler in this ramshackle flat, so be sure to table your judgment about youth raising children from multiple partners.
(Then again, you wouldn’t be watching Arnold if your sensibilities were so easily flustered.) Incessantly, swooping seabirds and crows crowd the sky, following Bailey everywhere, drawing her adoring consider.
