Bird at the Cannes Film Festival review: a Barry Keoghan tour de force... with a few dance moves thrown in

“Birds flying high, you know how I feel,” crooned Nina Simone. And you know who else is flying high right now? Barry Keoghan, that’s who! He stars in Andrea Arnold’s new film Bird, screening in competition in Cannes, as Bug, a young dad bringing up his kids in a squat in Gravesend.

Bug’s nickname refers to the creepy-crawlies tattooed all over his body and he certainly bugs his 12-year-old daughter, Bailey (Nykiya Adams). She’s on the cusp of womanhood and is having to deal with her first period, an absent mum and her dad’s impending surprise marriage.

The film follows Bailey as she goes about her days, desperate to be part of her older brother’s gang and be perceived as an adult (”I’m not a virgin!” she cries, but is fooling no one), and furiously resistant to her father’s likeable fiancée and his insistence that she be a bridesmaid.

Her brother’s gang has organised itself into a local vigilante group, sorting out all the creeps and abusers that plague their neighbourhood. When Bailey races off after witnessing the boys at work, she spends the night in a field only to wake to a snorting snuffling horse nudging her awake. She is joined by a strange man leaping and dancing in his kilt through the meadow.

He introduces himself as Bird (Franz Rogowski; an unusual casting choice) and asks Bailey for help. But Bailey has her own pressing family business to contend with, which concerns her three younger siblings being brought up by their mum in squalor and deprivation. Thus begins a camaraderie of sorts as she navigates the myriad issues she is forced to deal with, and Bird seeks his family and identity.

Arnold focuses on nature throughout the film and often does so through the videos Bailey makes on her phone. In the opening scene, Bailey is alone on a footbridge, her only company a seagull. Birds are everywhere, both real and figurative: mainly gulls and crows, either high in the air or close up and actively involved in the storyline.

When a situation gets out of hand, it is Bird who swoops in to help Bailey. Nature programmes are shown on TV in the background at home, Bug has a money-making scheme in the guise of a hallucinogenic slime producing toad, the camera lingers over flies and flowers.

Animals – the friendly horses, the urban fox, the pet snake and the faithful family dog, Dave – all combine to show the natural world that struggles to survive in the built environment alongside humans. The birds also represent a freedom that seems so out of reach, not just for Bailey but for so many of the characters living in the underbelly of British society. Disparaged and neglected, they strive to create a community and forge family bonds.

The most obvious comparison with this social realist film would be Kes, but there is a hint of Birdman here, too. Some might find the touch of magical realism a bit much too swallow but I loved it.

Arnold has returned to themes covered in her earlier work, Fish Tank, itself a prize winner in Cannes back in 2009, but this is a far more accomplished work. Adams carries the film on her young shoulders and is aided by the support of Keoghan, whose portrayal as her charming, volatile, loving and erratic father is a tour de force.

Arnold has even snuck in some dancing for Keoghan as well as a cheeky reference to Murder on the Dancefloor. Rogowski grows on you as the film progresses. With Ken Loach now officially retired, Arnold keeps the flame of his passionate socially aware filmmaking burning bright and strong.