TIFF: Bird People Review

Bird People (2014)

Cast: Josh Charles, Anaïs Demoustier, Roschdy Zem
Director: Pascale Ferran
Country: France
Genre: Drama | Fantasy | Romance

Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. For more information on the festival visit http://tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.

Pascale Ferran’s Bird People is an existential tale of alienation, but it’s little heavy handed about it. We are taken into the worlds of Gary and Audrey. Gary (Josh Charles) is an American in Paris. He is tired of everything: his job and his wife. He needs an escape from it and decides to leave it all behind while on business trip. Audrey (Anaïs Demoustier) is a French chambermaid who is exasperated with her pace in life and she isn’t sure what to do about it.

Anaïs Demoustier is delightful as Audrey, staring in wonder at birds and very much looking like a sparrow herself in her gesticulations.

Challenging our perception of romantic Paris, it mostly takes place within a Hilton hotel next to the Charles de Gaulle Airport. It’s a typical airport hotel environment, going in line with the universal commuting theme in the film. There’s even an interesting opening sequence where we hear the thoughts of people in transit. Some of them are memorizing their errands for the day, listening to music, and setting up their agendas. Scenes like this seep into the film: the actors look on in fascination at little sparrows taking flight or planes taking off from the runway. The lives of the characters themselves are glossed upon, but we’re not given much internal insight into their motivations or how they got to being stuck like they feel they are.

Through sighs and frustrated looks Josh Charles plays the typical bloke with lonely syndrome. It’s realistic, for we feel his anxieties, but after a while the trope gets a little tiring. Anaïs Demoustier is delightful as Audrey, staring in wonder at birds and very much looking like a sparrow herself in her gesticulations. Overall, their performances are solid and I found myself captivated not by their stories, but by their reactions to their fleeting moments. Audrey lights up with a gleeful curiosity of the people around her. As she cleans rooms, she listens and reads the people that pass her by. Gary, entirely focused on cutting off loose ties, manages to flit from scene to scene in a spatial isolation throughout the hotel and airport.

There’s less substance and more allusion to that substance–that is the problem with Ferran’s direction. It’s surely fascinating to look at, but after a while the flight metaphor wears thin and nothing much is offered beyond another allegory or predictable resolution.

As much as I enjoyed Charles and Demoustier in this film, I was mostly enchanted by the night flying views by the airport and the fields surrounding it. This had much to do with David Bowie’s Space Oddity playing in the background and, most of all, the charming sparrow that should get high billing in the film. Through visual affects and a surprise art house spin on Audrey’s story arc, those scenes probably are the biggest highlight of a rather overly long film.

The film is rendered through the lucid lens of Julien Hirsch. Long shots take in stark and cloudy landscapes and are pulled in inside the warmly lighted hotel. A combination of Hirsch’s deft camerawork and the artful technology that went into some of these visuals help bolster the film that is in much need of more meat. There’s less substance and more allusion to that substance  –that is the problem with Ferran’s direction. It’s surely fascinating to look at, but after while the flight metaphor wears thin and nothing much is offered beyond another allegory or predictable resolution.

I would have rated this film higher, solely on the performances of two fine actors and a cute sparrow, but that’s all the film is: two fine actors and a really cute sparrow.