Missed Madison: Now Streaming
Bird People | Pascale Ferran | France | 2014 | 127 min
Amazon Instant
Gary, an American in the midst of a midlife crisis, decides to quit his job and leave his family while on a business trip in Paris. Audrey works at the hotel that Gary is staying; bored by her job and life, she finds a means of escape.
The beginning of Bird People attempts to establish the isolation, yet similar paths, of people traveling out of the Paris airport. We are introduced to Gary (Josh Charles) and Audrey (Anaïs Demoustier), and we view them through their daily routine: Gary traveling on business, Audrey working as a hotel maid. This beginning is well shot and it establishes an interesting juxtaposition between extreme long shots of mobs in the airports to close-ups of individuals. But the opening doesn’t match the faster pace and tone of middle of the film and therefore seems out of place. Also, having a half-hour of setup started to drag and the somewhat intriguing style was only engaging for so long.
A business meeting conveys the boredom that Gary feels with his empty job. But other than this detail, the film could have cut the first 30 minutes and instead opened with Gary’s anxiety attack. Starting off with the ambiguity and excitement of Gary’s attack would have been far more engaging. With Gary’s anxiety attack the story becomes consuming. The anxiety provokes his decision to quit his job and leave his family. The film ignores the reasons leading to the mid-life crisis and instead focuses on the immediate consequences. This captures the aftermath that is usually missed, like having to tell your wife that you can’t stand her.
The emotional climax in Gary’s plotline comes with about an hour left in the film, long before a conventional screenplay’s climax. The conversation he has with his wife is absorbing, and for the first time my attention was sustained effortlessly. He uncomfortably has to tell her that he is going to leave and they go through a very realistic and painful take on a breakup, via Skype. The conversation lasts all night and in the morning, when Gary is noticeably sleep deprived, his wife finally asks him what she should tell the kids. He tells her to tell them the truth.
They should have ended the film right there, or else solely focused on Gary’s plotline because from here on the story isn’t as captivating. Attention shifts to Audrey’s plotline and the pace slows down as we see her wander through a shift at her work. She is obviously bored, unsatisfied and looking for an escape through cigarettes and mocking her boss. There is, however, a significant plot twist that would qualify as a major spoiler to describe here, other than to say the title itself provides a hint. Despite this unforeseen twist, however, the plot fails to live up to the excitement that one would expect with such a unique idea. The pace barely accelerates and the whole thing passes so quickly without even Audrey conveying that much excitement.
While watching Bird People, I constantly felt like I was missing something. The message, whatever it was, seemed to be inadequately thought out and therefore shallow. I just didn’t get it. Perhaps I felt this way because the characters were difficult to understand, especially Audrey. All of her actions and thoughts weren’t motivated by anything immediately intelligible for the audience. For instance, she seems to be annoyed by everyone around her, yet fascinated by staring at hotel guests. There are aspects of film that are impressive, like the well-thought-out compositions and the audacity of the plot twist, but these attempts failed to produce substance and the result is a movie that is unnecessarily long.