Lady Bird - This Week At The Movies

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Christine "Lady Bird" MacPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is in the final year of her strict Catholic high school, surrounded by rich, entitled types as her family scrapes together enough to get by month after month. She longs for adventure and sophistication, but finds neither in her hometown of Sacramento, California. In this heartfelt coming-of-age story, we see Lady Bird “enjoy” her first romance, suffer through her school play and tackle the seemingly impossible task of applying for college – hampered and helped by her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf).

Pros:

• This movie feels real, true, free of pretence or artifice. It just… hits the heart. Here is a simple, relatable story of a teenager arguing with her mum, squabbling with her friends, hating and loving life from one day to the next. First-time director-screenwriter Greta Gerwig has given us a charming, delightful, insightful film, full of spirit and truth. Here is a movie you want to describe succinctly – “There’s this girl, and she wants to go to college…” – but the words run away from you as you waffle on about the eccentric nuns at school, Lady Bird rolling out of a moving car mid-argument, the stuck-up “cool” kid from the “right side” of the tracks. Lady Bird says a lot, and means a lot. It’s really special.
• The utterly wonderful Saoirse Ronan earns her third Oscar nomination at the grand old age of 23 for her performance here, and it really is superb – only rivalled by Laurie Metcalf’s portrayal of Lady Bird’s mother, Marion, a nurse who works every hour God sends to put her daughter through the best education she could hope for, only to be rewarded with a blend of door-slamming tantrums and teary occasional gratitude. Playwright-screenwriter-actor Tracy Letts is excellent as Lady Bird’s comparatively lackadaisical father, as is, well, everyone really: Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet (of Call Me By Your Name fame), Beanie Feldstein… Gerwig gets stunning performances from her cast, and it’s a genuine pleasure just to watch them work.
• Lady Bird – the film, not the character, I should point out – enjoys a pacey, flipbook, photo album feel, like you’re skipping through Timehop highlights of your youth. It really clips along, and it’s a fun ride bouncing from one scene to another.

Cons:

• I loved this film, and I didn’t want it to end. Lady Bird is somehow both the perfect length and also too short – for me, anyway.
• Is this another coming-of-age white-girl-doesn’t-realise-how-lucky-she-has-it slice-of-life? Well, yes. It’s not that this sort of thing hasn’t been seen before, but it’s never been delivered as well, I promise you.
• Set in 2002, Lady Bird makes a “period” of the early noughties, all flip-phones and WAP and dial-up broadband. This makes me feel uncomfortable. Wasn’t 2002 yesterday?

Three word review: Something really special