Bird

Bird frequently feels as if we’re in an extended vignette where we’re tagging along for a ride with no beginning, middle or end.

This film is an interesting shift for the director in that it adds magical realism to the social realism that underpins previous works such as Fish Tank (2009) and American Honey (2016).

It meanders at times, but it soars too, lifted high on a belief love and family really do matter, no matter how scrappy and unconventional a form they may take.

What struck me more was the film’s interpretation of Bailey’s coming of age not as something to be mourned or that comes on too soon. Instead, it’s an activation.

I think the leap of faith doesn't entirely work but I kind of went with it, not least because it felt like a positive move.

In this ecstatic coming-of-age drama set among the squatting classes in Northern Kent, England, Newcomer Nykiya Adams, in a refreshingly natural performance that carries the movie, plays Bailey.

Despite the difficult and weighty subjects here, like underage and neglectful parenting, the film's social realism finds way of escape in an irrepressible sense of fun and an immersive, uplifting natural world

It's a swirling film, full of joy and grinding poverty, despair and the beauty of nature pushing through ruins

The film builds to a daring final reel that has been deftly built to with impressive subtlety. In lesser hands, the gift the film bestows on viewers wouldn’t have worked so beautifully.


Bird almost exists in a voyeuristic plane, but its sense of magic fidelity allows it to exist in a certain escapism.