Bird People

French Film Festival 2016

Greenbelt 3 Cinema

Of all the films I watched in this year's festival, "Bird People" is the most quirky, eccentric and really quite strange.

It evolves around 2 people whose lives are explored in the same setting - the Hyatt hotel located beside the Charles de Gaulle airport in the French capital. 

Gary (Josh Charles) is an American on business in Paris before proceeding to Dubai for more meetings. He communicates mostly in English and through a local who translates for him during his business meetings. Out of the blue, he decides to quit his job, end his marriage, lounge in his hotel room and just stay in Paris, indefinitely. All this he does in an eerily calm demeanor, sans hysterics, no explanation. 

The other one is Audrey, a young chambermaid at the hotel. Practically invisible to hotel guests as she diligently does her tasks, she is visibly stuck in a rut, bored and a loner. One day as she explores the rooftop of the hotel which has a bird's eye view of the airplanes parked at the tarmac of the airport, she flies! Yes, she turns into a little sparrow. No magic, no flash lightning effect ... nothing at all to indicate she would literally become a bird!

So she is all over the place, exploring the hotel grounds, flying high up in the air,. Sometimes she is talking, other times she is quiet and just flying all over. The camera zooms in and out of places, giving us a literal bird's eye view from Audrey's perspective as a sparrow.

Perhaps this transformation implies she is totally fed up with her routine life, she takes flight, literally. No further explanation is also given for Gary's sudden life altering decision to just quit everything without any sense of what he wants to do from that moment on. 

It can be frustrating as I tend to overthink and over analyze but I'd deem it is best to just let things be as they are and not turn it into something it isn't.  Either that or I just tuned myself out as soon as she started her flight as a little sparrow.

Towards the end, when the two characters briefly encounter each other in the lobby of hotel (by the way, she is back as Audrey!) there are hints that something just might come out of it or maybe not. Who knows?! We are left to form our own conclusions but the question is ... do we have to or do we even care?!