Lady Bird - Review
Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith
Having co-written and starred in some of the most acclaimed and beloved female-centred indie films of the past few years (namely Frances Ha and Mistress America), Greta Gerwig has finally stepped behind the camera to direct her self-penned feature, Lady Bird, a comic yet emotional coming-of-age tale. Lady Bird has since become an awards juggernaut and Gerwig has been nominated for Best Director at the Oscars, making her the fifth woman in the ceremony's 90 year history to achieve such an honour.
Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Ronan) is a senior student at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California. Lady Bird has ambitions of attending an Ivy League College in New York and over the course of her senior year, she must navigate her family's financial struggles, turbulent romantic interests and her relationship with her similarly strong-willed mother, Marion (Metcalf).
Very loosely inspired by Gerwig's own upbringing in Sacramento, Lady Bird is an ode to many things, but firstly it's a love letter to the director's home town. It's a town that Lady Bird can't wait to spread her wings and soar far away from, with the hopes of one day being surrounded by culture on the East Coast. But Sacramento has impacted her far more deeply than she knows - it's her home, and ultimately, her heart. It's a notion that rings painfully true, and even if audiences don't recognise the locations they see on screen, they'll relate to the feelings that Lady Bird has attached to them. Rather than following a strict structure that adheres to conventional story beats, Lady Bird captures an extended series of moments that are bruising and resonant. The film is a 90-minute trip down memory lane, enriched by Gerwig and DP Sam Levy's decision to create a visual style reminiscent of a photo album.
"Don't you think they're the same thing? Love and attention" asks Sister Sarah Joan (Smith) to Lady Bird. In the case of writer-director Greta Gerwig's treatment and depiction of every single one of her fictional creations, the two are interchangeable. Supporting characters are fleshed out and given a thoughtful amount of depth. Lady Bird's affable father Larry (Letts) struggles with depression, her best friend Julie (Feldstein, who deftly avoids becoming comic fodder) worries about her mother's relationship and whether she'll attend college and her angsty older brother Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues) struggles to find employment. Even Kyle (Chalamet) who is on the surface your run-of-the-mill "cool guy" is afforded emotional complexity. This is briefly alluded to in a scene where Lady Bird walks past Kyle's father who is afflicted with cancer. The sequence is less than ten seconds long, but it is enough to tell us that Kyle is quietly suffering too, despite his aloof veneer.
Lady Bird visits the milestones of many typical American coming-of-age story; Lady Bird breaks up with her first love (Hedges), developed a fixation with the school hottie, loses her virginity and risks her friendship with her best friend on the quest for popularity. While these tropes may seem tiresome, Gerwig's approach to them is told through her own unique voice. Our heroine is desperate to experience and "live through something", not realising that these teenage rites of passage that she undergoes are shaping her into the young woman that she wants to be - and already is. One element that truly makes Lady Bird such a departure from other films of the same genre is the complicated love story at its core between Lady Bird and her mother. The mother and daughter are more alike in was than they'd like to admit but their differences and expectations of one another have created a chasm. Their casual conversations soon spiral into verbal sparring matches where neither are willing to compromise, established perfectly in one of the film's first scenes that ends with Lady Bird throwing herself out of a moving car rather than listen to her mother's criticisms for another second.
Gerwig has enlisted the talents of a wonderful ensemble cast to bring her words on the page to life but its her collaboration with Saoirse Ronan on the titular role that makes Lady Bird such a delightful and nuanced character. She is precocious and confident but displays traits of entitlement and arrogance. However, through the writer's sensitive script and Ronan's perfect characterisation, she never veers into unlikable territory due to her charm and bold attitude that many young people aspire to possess. Like any 17 year-old, she faces an identity crisis, trying on different personalities like she's changing outfits to see what fits best for the occasion. This process is vital but ultimately out of Lady Bird's control - her home, her relationships and her experiences have informed her figurative style forever.
With Lady Bird, Gerwig has made a simply sensational directorial debut. It'll make you laugh. It'll make you cry. But you'll emerge with a whimsical nostalgia for the place that you call (or once called) home and for the people that make it such.
EB
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith
Having co-written and starred in some of the most acclaimed and beloved female-centred indie films of the past few years (namely Frances Ha and Mistress America), Greta Gerwig has finally stepped behind the camera to direct her self-penned feature, Lady Bird, a comic yet emotional coming-of-age tale. Lady Bird has since become an awards juggernaut and Gerwig has been nominated for Best Director at the Oscars, making her the fifth woman in the ceremony's 90 year history to achieve such an honour.Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Ronan) is a senior student at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California. Lady Bird has ambitions of attending an Ivy League College in New York and over the course of her senior year, she must navigate her family's financial struggles, turbulent romantic interests and her relationship with her similarly strong-willed mother, Marion (Metcalf).
Very loosely inspired by Gerwig's own upbringing in Sacramento, Lady Bird is an ode to many things, but firstly it's a love letter to the director's home town. It's a town that Lady Bird can't wait to spread her wings and soar far away from, with the hopes of one day being surrounded by culture on the East Coast. But Sacramento has impacted her far more deeply than she knows - it's her home, and ultimately, her heart. It's a notion that rings painfully true, and even if audiences don't recognise the locations they see on screen, they'll relate to the feelings that Lady Bird has attached to them. Rather than following a strict structure that adheres to conventional story beats, Lady Bird captures an extended series of moments that are bruising and resonant. The film is a 90-minute trip down memory lane, enriched by Gerwig and DP Sam Levy's decision to create a visual style reminiscent of a photo album.
"Don't you think they're the same thing? Love and attention" asks Sister Sarah Joan (Smith) to Lady Bird. In the case of writer-director Greta Gerwig's treatment and depiction of every single one of her fictional creations, the two are interchangeable. Supporting characters are fleshed out and given a thoughtful amount of depth. Lady Bird's affable father Larry (Letts) struggles with depression, her best friend Julie (Feldstein, who deftly avoids becoming comic fodder) worries about her mother's relationship and whether she'll attend college and her angsty older brother Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues) struggles to find employment. Even Kyle (Chalamet) who is on the surface your run-of-the-mill "cool guy" is afforded emotional complexity. This is briefly alluded to in a scene where Lady Bird walks past Kyle's father who is afflicted with cancer. The sequence is less than ten seconds long, but it is enough to tell us that Kyle is quietly suffering too, despite his aloof veneer.
Lady Bird visits the milestones of many typical American coming-of-age story; Lady Bird breaks up with her first love (Hedges), developed a fixation with the school hottie, loses her virginity and risks her friendship with her best friend on the quest for popularity. While these tropes may seem tiresome, Gerwig's approach to them is told through her own unique voice. Our heroine is desperate to experience and "live through something", not realising that these teenage rites of passage that she undergoes are shaping her into the young woman that she wants to be - and already is. One element that truly makes Lady Bird such a departure from other films of the same genre is the complicated love story at its core between Lady Bird and her mother. The mother and daughter are more alike in was than they'd like to admit but their differences and expectations of one another have created a chasm. Their casual conversations soon spiral into verbal sparring matches where neither are willing to compromise, established perfectly in one of the film's first scenes that ends with Lady Bird throwing herself out of a moving car rather than listen to her mother's criticisms for another second.
Gerwig has enlisted the talents of a wonderful ensemble cast to bring her words on the page to life but its her collaboration with Saoirse Ronan on the titular role that makes Lady Bird such a delightful and nuanced character. She is precocious and confident but displays traits of entitlement and arrogance. However, through the writer's sensitive script and Ronan's perfect characterisation, she never veers into unlikable territory due to her charm and bold attitude that many young people aspire to possess. Like any 17 year-old, she faces an identity crisis, trying on different personalities like she's changing outfits to see what fits best for the occasion. This process is vital but ultimately out of Lady Bird's control - her home, her relationships and her experiences have informed her figurative style forever.
With Lady Bird, Gerwig has made a simply sensational directorial debut. It'll make you laugh. It'll make you cry. But you'll emerge with a whimsical nostalgia for the place that you call (or once called) home and for the people that make it such.
EB
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