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Sep 12, 2014 By Jennifer Chang Web Exclusive

Bird People begins with two seemingly opposite people. Gary (Josh Charles of In Treatment and The Good Wife) is a successful and wealthy professional traveling through Paris on business, with a lovely wife and children at home. Audrey (Anaїs Demoustier), on the other hand, is a young chambermaid at one of Charles de Gaulle Airport’s hotels, working long hours with a dreary commute, and having seemingly no goal in life. Underneath the exterior, both are exhausted from their unending, expected routine. As Gary and Audrey watch planes take off from their hotel windows, they experience transformations that change the course of their lives.

Bird People is a lovely concept study of being or becoming a “nobody.” Gary and Audrey escape their unfulfilling lives by severing their ties, and undergo the giddy freedom as well as the terror and loss that accompany the experience. Gary’s exploration goes down the realistic route of cutting off one’s social connections and its painful consequences, while Audrey’s is an unexpected fantastical adventure. The special effects were assembled with painstaking details (the filmmaker described the process like “making lace”) and the labor of love paid off handsomely. These dreamlike elements look organic and charming, and are the best part of the film. Even without the FX, both Josh Charles and Anaїs Demoustier are wonderful, quietly emitting dread or hopefulness through their long and lonely days. The uncertainty toward the future that was in their eyes from the beginning of the film does not go away at the end, but they, like the audience, leave with anticipation, as well as a sense of gladness.

www.ifcfilms.com/films/bird-people

Author rating: 6/10