httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZFVUxiGfeI

One swallow doesn’t make a summer, and unfortunately for this calm but involving drama, one pigeon doesn’t quite make a film. THE BIRD, brought to us by Yves Caumon, is an understated tale on the loneliness brought on by grief. Although anchored by a fine central performance from Sandrine Kiberlain, and building to hopeful finale, it lacks enough dramatic spark to bring the audience fully on this cinematic flight of fancy.

Kiberlain plays Anne, a catering worker in Bordeaux who appears a lonesome sole – eating alone and rejecting the advances of a male co-worker consistently. A brief encounter with a fellow cinema goer one evening appears the closest she has got to emotional interaction in some time. The opening scenes tease us with hints of personal trauma that have engendered this shut-off attitude. Unable to get to sleep due to rustling in the eaves of her cramped flat, it transpires the noise comes from a lone trapped pigeon. The bird subsequently takes up residence in Anne’s cramped flat and begins to enjoy something of a kinship with the lonely woman, emblematic of her own emotional state.

Throughout, Caumon’s film is an extremely placid affair. Although this really allows Kiberlain’s thoughtful performance to shine through, it can’t be denied that it comes at the expense of dramatic imperative or weight. Although Kiberlain does an admirable job at the centre of the film, the (perhaps necessarily) sparse script doesn’t help her flesh out character. When your co-star is a bird, however, it’s a testament to her acting that there is any at all. This is largely because THE BIRD is a film more concerned with the atmosphere and mood of the piece than the precise mechanics of it. Fortunately, the moving predicament and causes of Anne’s situation, as well as the hopeful final shot, mean the film manages to hold together audience sympathy, even as the existential metaphors ramp up to self-consciously arty levels.

Although it never really takes flight (that’s the last bird pun, I promise), THE BIRD is an involving piece where the heart and emotion lies in what goes unsaid.