A Bird Flew in review – heartfelt portrait of film-makers struggling with lockdown

Tlisted here are some heartfelt performances and vignettes on this debut function from producer-turned-director Kirsty Bell and writers Elizabeth Morris and Dominic Wells – and positively some lustrous monochrome photos from cinematographer Sergio Delgado. However this lockdown ensemble piece a couple of film manufacturing stymied by Covid is self-conscious and doesn’t actually come collectively, and the tonal shifts is usually a little uncomfortable.

Camilla Rutherford performs Rebecca, an actor who offers an amazing efficiency in a movie shoot that wraps simply earlier than the coronavirus restrictions land, however then succumbs to melancholy because of loneliness, unemployment and suspicion that this movie won't ever see the sunshine of day. In the meantime kindly fellow actor David (Derek Jacobi) is on their own in his south of France villa and dealing with issues of his personal. Editor Lucy (Morgana Robinson) is anguished as a result of she will’t go to her sick mum; author Peter (Jeff Fahey) is pining for colleague Anna (Julie Dray) who has now left London for her Paris condominium and is dealing with an abusive ex-partner. And there are various different little brief tales right here, some unhappy, some hopeful, all in regards to the social splintering and imprisonment that everybody went by throughout lockdown.

This collective melancholy is a wholly legitimate topic for a drama: as somebody right here says: “If we’re alone, actually alone, are we actually alive in any respect?” However there's something just a little bit laboured and unconvincing about A Chicken Flew in – though Rutherford is all the time sturdy because the actor heading for Norma Desmond territory, consuming closely and livestreaming her accelerating anguish on social media.

A Chicken Flew in is launched on 30 September in cinemas.

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