24/41
Bailey seeks attention and adventure elsewhere
Scenario
Bailey lives with her brother Hunter and her father Bug, who raises them alone in a squat in north Kent. Bug doesn’t have much time to devote to them.
Edited in Fontaines DC: Bug (2024)
Barry Keoghan dropped out of Gladiator II (2024) to star in this film instead.. There are two wonderful performances to enjoy in this story of twelve-year-old "Bailey" (Nikia Adams).
She lives in a squat with her father "Bug" (Barry Keoghan), brother "Hunter" (Jason Buda) and her future stepmother "Kayleigh" (Frankie Box)
It is her upcoming wedding and wearing a beautiful, bright pink cat suit that pits her against her well-meaning father and leaves her to frolic in the fields of Kent. It is there that she meets the rather enigmatic "Bird" (Franz Rogowski), who is searching for her parents, who lived in a high-rise building in Gravesend near her home.
Between searching for her new boyfriend’s parents, her desire to help her mother and siblings, and her father’s pressure to commit to her own hopes for happiness, young "Bailey" is not without her challenges to look out for
She decides to try to help this rather strange man and quickly their lives become strangely intertwined as we discover that her mother (Jasmine Jobson) is struggling with an abusive relationship with her boyfriend "Skate" (James Nelson-Joyce) while also trying to raise three young men. Keoghan is energetic as she rides through the neighborhoods on her electric scooter, and her character serves well to support the main characters – and on that front there’s a charmingly understated chemistry developed between Adams and Rogowski, who mix their respective backstories with a soupçon of mysticism and plenty of allegorical imagery to present some rather elusive themes of freedom, family and, quite often, fun.
It’s a slow burn, but it works
There are also some rather violent undertones, and we’re left in no doubt that her life and that of her family have been and will remain quite turbulent – but these points are not presented to us through hammering, but rather through careful observation and the development of engaging personalities that unfold subtly but powerfully over the course of a few hours.