2 Birds

Editor's note: Warning - this review contains spoilers.

A touchingly beautiful and sensitive film that also includes drug taking, gang-banging and rape?

Youngsters are enjoying themselves at a seaport. Four of them wander back, chatting about school and plucking up courage to flirt with each other. A drugs dealer’s t-shirt boasts the slogan, “I busted Caesar’s slots.”

They settle down at a party. All of them take ketamine, some maybe for the first time. A drug that is sometimes substituted for ecstasy tablets, ketamine produces a dreamy effect. (Higher doses produce a ‘K-Hole’, a hallucinogenic flight - often compared to a near-death experience and one that can be spiritual or frightening. The user feels far away from their body.)

Our older couple, in their late teens, are soon snogging enthusiastically. The younger lad looks on, not sure how to make a move with his ‘girl’. An older kid chats to her when she goes to the bathroom. The boy feels the drug effects washing over him. “Shouldn’t we go?” he asks her, a bit unconvincingly. Soon though, he’s pretty out of it. He cries, silently.

In the party aftermath, the young lad comes to. Sufficiently to be able to see his girl, quite oblivious to the proceedings, being violated by two men in the next room. Eventually he’s able to move. The Neanderthals have left. Gentle lighting suggests the warmth of his feelings towards the girl in a scene of remarkable beauty, contrasting with the horror that has preceded it. But what will she think when she wakes up?

2 Birds is such a multi-nuanced film it is hard to know what category to place it in. Brilliantly structured, it also contrasts a gamut of sexuality and emotions that teenagers maybe have to be aware of. It could also be read as a warning call about casual use of recreational drugs. But to its credit and credibility, it never preaches.