Lady Bird Review

Lady Bird is a dreamer, with romantic and cultural fantasies. She’s also overly dramatic, petulant, hard to live with, ferocious, vulnerable and determined to make her way to a college on the East Coast as far away from her ‘midwest of California’ home of Sacramento in 2002. Lady Bird the film, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, is a wonderful, moving, hilarious, and timely coming-of-age story built around sometimes fiery and strained core of the relationship between a mother and daughter.

Saoirse Ronan is remarkably transcendent as Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Lady Bird is the name given to her by her, that theme of self-identity runs deep through the film). Utterly charming and lovable, precocious but never insufferable. A hurricane of emotions that strike so truly for a teenage girl, it’s a wonder she doesn’t come with a storm warning. As she navigates her senior year in high school, Ronan plays her as a hurricane of emotions that swings violently from destructive to vulnerability in an instant. It’s a stirring, magnetic performance, one of the best of the year. There may not be a better young actor working today. Ronan has the rawness of Streep, the vibrancy and command of Katherine Hepburn, and the emotional immediacy of Ingrid Bergman.

Her life becomes a series of white lies, pivots, love gained and lost, implosion and reparation of friendships, a running battle with her mother, and a steely drive to make something of herself, like all teenagers believe they can be. Her world view shifts dramatically around different people, like she’s trying on new clothes. Losing her virginity and falling in love for the first time are hilarious, harrowing and brilliantly realised. At one point she is naming stars with her first love, Danny, the next she has her heart catastrophically broken by him. It’s this beautifully chaotic duality that makes up so much of adolescent life that is crafted by Gerwig, infused in each scene like a fond, awkward memory.

It cannot be said enough how fantastic Gerwig’s direction and script are. It echoes French New Wave and Neo-realism coming of age films but with a dynamic and modern female perspective that doesn't feel self-aggrandizing. The script is biting, sharp, eternally funny and laced with warmth and drama. Gerwig’s development as a writer has been one of the most fantastic things to behold over the last few years. There are echoes of her Frances Ha script but this film does more than enough to stand on its own. She finds moments to show off some effective directorial touches, namely the theatre performances and a prom night sequence that’s low-key powerful. It’s an assured statement of intent from Gerwig.

As Lady Bird’s mother, Laurie Metcalf is suitably hard edged, warm, scary and a perfect foil to her explosively vibrant daughter. Her biting remarks are delivered with concern and love, helping to shape her daughter for the reality of the world. Their relationship feels so real, so lived in. One moment they’re at each other’s throats, threatening to never speak again, the next they’re bonding over a thanksgiving dress or an audiotape of The Grapes of Wrath. The rest of the cast is uniformly fantastic, from Timothée Chalamet and Lucas Bridges as two objects of Lady Bird’s surging desire to Tracy Letts as her understanding father and Beanie Feldstein as her best friend, Julianne.

It’s a magnificent, endlessly funny and affecting ode to imperfection, determination and the fleeting joys of being a teenager. It’s about accepting who you are, even if it’s kind of average and not transcendent. The film is way beyond average. A stunningly real achievement of director, script and actor in perfect unison.