There is something magical about the way Andrea Arnold uses pop music within the diegesis. In 2017, the British filmmaker penned one of the decade’s finest cinematic moments in American Honey: the famous scene of the first encounter between protagonists Star and Jake in a random supermarket, whose mise-en-scène is crafted around Rihanna’s mega-hit We Found Love. Then, in her 2021 documentary Cow, she edited a scene where one of the two heifers is courted (and mounted) by a bull to the beats of Kali Uchis’s Tyrant.

Now, in Bird, her fifth feature, Arnold pushes the music pedal to the metal: from the very beginning, when Bailey (Nykiya Adams) is picked up on a scooter by her father, Bug (a Barry Keoghan playing a Hackney lad at the peak of his abilities, a true contender for the Best Actor award), Fontaine DC’s Too Real blares from his Bluetooth speaker. By the end of the film, we’ll have gone through a Brittanica playlist featuring all the favourite tracks of the millennials (despite a few sporadic moments of trap or hip-hop): from a few subtle Beatles tunes to The Verve, Blur, and (in an ironic – and therefore all the more delightful – scene) Coldplay. (Oasis is conspicuously missing, so we know which side of the great Britpop battle Arnold stands on.)

I start with the music because therein lies much of the emotional core of the film (and, hence, much of its strategy) – and thus, how I related to it: as Keoghan’s character says at one point, it’s “dad music”, and inevitably, the way you relate to this music “genre” involves a sort of guilty pleasure, a sort of acceptance that you’re indulging in a small cultural artefact knowing full well there’s something a bit quaint, even a bit embarrassing, about it. Because Bird is a film with plenty of imperfections – but there’s something in the candour with which Arnold builds her characters, in the way their humanity always surfaces even amidst a social environment so wrecked by poverty, marginalisation, and ghettoisation, in the imperfect ways they express love and care for each other, even in the film’s undeniable naiveties (which are difficult to discuss without giving away the ending), that inevitably makes you hum along to its rhythm.

Unlike the vast majority of socially-tinged cinema that has been practised in Europe over the past decade, Arnold’s is not just a sterile (and therefore somewhat dehumanising) demonstration of horrifying statistics about the number of children living in poverty, domestic violence, parental abandonment, drug use, and so on. On the contrary, it fully immerses itself in the chaotic and often violent everyday life, pierced by flashes of bliss of the people caught in their midst, gently capturing their extremely delicate emotional and psychological embroidery and their ways of showing affection and solidarity, all without compromising the rigour of social realism. (On the other hand, the final act marks a significant shift in tone.)

American Honey‘s Star is inherited by Bailey, a teenager who, over the course of a few fateful days, will face both coming of age (including physiologically) and the deeper issues of her extremely unstable family and living environment: her father (who lives in an insalubrious squat, full of graffiti and sketchy characters) supports himself by selling hallucinogenic drugs and is about to remarry, her mother is trapped in a highly abusive relationship, and her half-siblings (on both sides) are also caught in dramatic situations.

Amidst this perpetual mess, Bailey randomly meets Bird (indie sweetheart Franz Rogowski, bringing all his weirdness and gentleness to this role), a homeless man searching for the family he lost many years ago and who seems, at first glance, to be on the neurodivergent spectrum – but over the course of the week, it becomes increasingly clear that his presence is atypical for far more unsuspected reasons. And from this unlikely collision, Bailey will find not only the strength to face her terrible circumstances (“You’ve often had to fend for yourself, haven’t you?”, Bird asks her at one point, in his laconic but meaningful manner) – but also a way to break free from them, to open herself to the lighter and, yes, beautiful aspects of life.

Bird is a film with plenty of imperfections – but there’s something in the candour with which Arnold builds her characters, in the way their humanity always surfaces even amidst a social environment so wrecked by poverty, marginalisation, and ghettoisation, in the imperfect ways they express love and care for each other, even in the film’s undeniable naiveties, that inevitably makes you hum along to its rhythm.

In this often anarchic landscape, where characters (and the camera) glide seamlessly into the frame, Bird loses its vital momentum a few times – either through narrative shortcuts or, conversely, through clutter – and at times, finds at least questionable (if not downright cheesy) solutions for many of the intricate narrative threads it unravels. But, as I said earlier, it’s just like ’90s hits: it’s a film that sneaks so close to your heart that it becomes impossible to dismiss it altogether – Bug gathers a bunch of shady guys from the squat to sing Yellow  to a hallucinogenic frog, when all jokes about Coldplay’s hit disappear completely as the chorus hits.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.