fable

A raw fable about looking up instead of feeling down, “Bird” shows writer-director Andrea Arnold back in a familiar milieu of cramped youth on the periphery, making do with what little is available, seesawing between explosive anger and playful respite.

In Coralie Fargeat’s blood-soaked fable about fear and self-loathing in Hollywood, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a faded star who submits to a back-alley rejuvenation regime to reset her career.

It feels like a very generic adaptation with a celebrity narrator, when Graham’s Beth could have had a stronger presence in the film for connection to contemporary times, and a reason why we should take heed of this retro fable.

Carmello, who received one of her Tony nominations for her performance in the Broadway premiere of “Parade,” finds a youthful voice for Kimberly but imbues it with hints of the powerful maturity in her final numbers that brings home the poignant poetry of this fable of a show.

"Part of the brilliance of Nightbitch," Lenker said in her review, "is the ways it doesn't stop at showcasing the isolation and loneliness of motherhood, cut off from a previous version of oneself and one's life. It takes this fable a step further."