4th EDITION

International Film Heritage Festival

Yangon, 4 – 13 November 2016
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Bird People
Pascale Ferran
France – 2014
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Cast: Josh Charles (Gary Newman), Anaïs Demoustier (Audrey Camuzet), Roschdy Zem (Simon), Taklyt Vongdara (Akira), Geoffrey Cantor (Allan), Camélia Jordana (Leila)
Screenplay: Guillaume Bréaud, Pascale Ferran
Cinematography: Julien Hirsch
Production: Archipel 35, France 2, Cinéma Titre et Structure Production, Canal+, Ciné+, France Télévisions, Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), Région Ile-de-France Cofinova 8, Procirep, Angoa-Agicoa, MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Cofinova 5, Cofinova 6
Language: French, English, Japanese
Duration: 127 min
Color: Color

Synopsis: Gary is an American engineer who arrives in Paris to finalize details on a major project in Dubai; Audrey is a twentysomething who works as a maid in the airport hotel where Gary is staying. Their shared sense of ennui and indecision is obvious, but their journeys of self-discovery proceed on separate tracks. Gary awakens mid-business-trip to the realization that both his professional and personal lives feel empty and unsatis­fying, and informs his business partners and wife Elisabeth that he will not be returning to any of them. Audrey, meanwhile, finds her daily clean­ing routines upended by a fantastical transformative event. One mysterious evening, she discovers the ability to free herself from her chambermaid duties to observe, unseen, an assortment of individuals within and beyond the confines of the airport hotel.

Notes:
Fanciful, original and unexpected airport-set drama that captures the frenzy and pressures of modern life contrasted with lives led by creatures free as a bird. Pascale Ferran delivers a flurry of characters, but animal lovers and special-effects fans will especially appreciate the cinematic magic that introduces those storied Parisian sparrows. On a hotel terrace, Audrey is transformed into a sparrow, takes off and takes viewers on a breathtaking flight over the nighttime airport buildings and runways. Special effects are terrific and the overheads (including the especially euphoric hop accompanied by David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”) deliver truly unique and kinetically thrilling trips with a bird’s-eye POV. Audrey as sparrow also has adventures indoors as she whizzes through hotel hallways and into rooms. The film provides viewers with a unique trip into the air and the ever-complex, increasingly challenged human condition.

The film achieves moments of poignant mystery, as when we follow the story of hotel receptionist Simon, whose presence is a bridge between Gary and Audrey’s plot-lines. Offering a spare cigarette and some fleeting company to Gary during his panic attack, Simon himself contends with financial issues and semi-homelessness—facts that Audrey only discovers when she surreptitiously follows him when he leaves work. Moments like this hint at the rich metaphorical possibilities that the film’s title implies, where the freedom of flight (from responsibility, from boredom, from expectation) cannot be disentangled from feelings of transience and uncertainty. Critics comment that Bird People ultimately abandons the more deeply unsettling implications of class and cultural difference for a less problematic vision of an essentially human connection across barriers. Arguably, the strongest aspect of Bird People is Ferran’s diagnosis of the soul-crushing ennui of jet-setting corporate life.

Notes drawn from Toumarkine, Doris. “Bird People.” Film Journal International 117, no. 10 (October 2014): 71-72. and Connolly, Matthew. “Bird People.” Film Comment 50, no. 5 (September 2014): 69-70.