The short film Birdcage is one of the tougher ones to watch emotionally, but it’s so believable and compelling that you can’t look away. French films tend to be great with subtlety and nuance— in addition to whatever serious unidentified mental health diagnosis the main character is dealing with, she is also coping with substance use, unemployment, and child custody. Portraying this whole domino effect allows the writer and director Elsa Duval room to show how one rash or impulsive mistake after another piles up and your life slides out of your control until you can’t afford to make another, or you’ll lose everything and break down. The lead actress Laura Masci does an excellent balancing act playing a complex human whose actions seem endearingly quirky one moment and irresponsibly reckless the next. We want to root for her because she obviously cares about her child and is trying to get her life back together, even though we witness her being scatterbrained and doing self-destructive things.
Birdcage is grittily realistic and uncompromisingly sad. Its ending has stuck with me, demonstrating that there is beauty in the most hopeless of moments, a pretty song you can find within your own cage.
Birdcage will play in Mental Filmness on 10/10, World Mental Health Day.
Get your free tickets at https://www.eventbrite.com/manage/events/2000057532921
