The opening scene of Bird People, a Pascale Ferran film screened at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, celebrates the mundane of riding in a commuter rail to work. You overhear two students arguing about Cuban history. You sneak a listen to the music blaring in the headphones of another rider. You even get to dive inside the thoughts of a gate attendant for Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, mentally rehearsing the script and procedure to check-in passengers before they board their aircraft. The scene concludes with the introduction of the denim-clad Audrey (Anaïs Demoustier), a college-aged housekeeper for the Hilton Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport peering out of her window, focused on a tiny sparrow outside.
This introduction establishes the Parisian setting as another major character in the film, whose sights and sounds act as both a catalyst to advance the story and as a narrator to fill in the many scenes where dialogue is nonexistent. The other character central to this story, Silicon Valley engineer Gary Newman (Josh Charles), receives a similar introduction to Audrey: he stands slightly slouched and statuesque — think Napoleon Dynamite before his big dance — at a baggage claim carousel at Charles de Gaulle Airport, the conveyor belt rumbling as luggage and more luggage cycle past Newman. A plastic tan suitcase appears on screen and Newman suddenly springs to life to claim it and then exit, ending the scene.
But it is the nearby Hilton hotel where Audrey works that brings her and Gary — a guest at the Hilton for a day-long layover at Paris for a meeting before departing for Dubai — together. Even though both characters are in the Hilton simultaneously for much of the movie, there is actually little interaction between the French woman and the American man; the two-hour film is divided into two halves and tells Gary’s story first before delving into Audrey’s.
Despite the lack of interaction between the two, Hilton symbolically traps Gary and Audrey in the parallel situation of being fed up with their keep: Gary with the stress of his high stakes job and unhappy marriage to Elisabeth (Radha Mitchell) and Audrey with her increasingly demanding job, where her bosses continuously ask her to up the number of days and hours she works without increasing their appreciation of her efforts. In between the rising tension, Ferran reinforces the abundant symbolism in the film by peppering scenes of both characters looking out of the windows to Charles de Gaulle airport and watching airplanes take off, land, and taxi.
Eventually, the characters catch on to the symbolism of the airplane, and Gary and Audrey each separately find themselves free from the shackles of their mundane lives. After a late-night anxiety attack that features a wonderful 30 seconds of Gary playing Tetris in the middle of night, Gary makes a series of phone calls with business partners Allan (Geoffrey Cantor) and McCullan (Clark Johnson) to quit his job and wash his hands of all interests with the company before engaging in a tense Skype conversation with Elisabeth over the dissolution of the marriage. With the use of Skype in favor of the phone, the focus ends up on Gary’s stoic demeanor in the face of Elisabeth’s fluctuation from anger to sadness to resignation when they have to figure out how to break the news to their kids. Gary’s emotional and physical detachment is complete, and although Gary’s act is unforgivably selfish, his newfound emotions after the decision make it difficult to be totally unsympathetic to him.
Audrey’s parallel liberation requires you to watch the film. The only other things I’ll say about her half of the film is that Audrey’s curiosity is endearing, a Japanese artist (Taklyt Vongdara) gets the chance to shine, and the film presents some of the most gorgeous cinematography I’ve ever seen. Even though Audrey’s backstory is not as fleshed out as Gary’s, she comes across as a sensitive soul due to that curiosity and her observant ways. Those traits shine through when Audrey and Gary finally meet and provide the warmth that was missing in each individual’s interactions with the other characters. And when you’re exiting the theater, you’ll feel that same warmth after all the sights and sounds you experienced with Gary and Audrey in your brief stay in Paris.
The Masthead 