Lady Bird (Dir. Greta Gerwig, 1h 30m)

At the centre, the warm, slightly jaded, poetic and rebellious, East-Coast wanderlustful heart, if you will, of Greta Gerwig's low budget coming of age piece, Lady Bird, is Saoirse Ronan, as the titular Lady Bird, the self-given nom de vie of Christine, a disaffected young woman from Sacramento, California, from the wrong side of the tracks, dreaming of greatness and of a higher life than the one she inhabits, whilst weathering the storms of her early adulthood, from the popular cliques of her devoutly Catholic school, to her first brushes with romance, to the often stormy relationship with her mother who believes her dream to attend an Ivy League college, in a "city with culture" are unobtainable, and indeed damaging the family. It is this relationship, thus, which defines and drives the film, from beginning to perfect finale.

Ronan's performance, however, makes the film-in another actresses hands, this utterly charming performance would have been either overly saccharine, or even worse, drifted her into either unlikable or manic dream pixie girl territory. Ronan, however, brings a perfect quality to Lady Bird, a mix of rebellion-at one point she ties cans to a teacher's car, and at another, steals a magazine, and throughout the film clearly has a healthy disrespect for authority, and indeed the boundaries set by her parents and school, and self doubt-at points, she clearly begins to give up on her dream, is clearly ashamed of her family situation-directing a friend to a totally different address, refusing to go by the birthname given to her by her family, until late into the picture.

Her teenage contradiction, of falling in with the popular clique at school, only to find their world view is narrow-the popular girl at school she befriends is happy to stay in the boring safety of Sacramento, start a family, whilst the two boys she eventually dates are respectively gay and a boring, slightly neurotic conspiracy theorist, whose relationship with her eventually resolves in unsatisfying sex that leaves Lady Bird upset and searching for something more meaning, which eventually ends in her ditching the latter to spend prom with her best friend-there is certainly a deep sense of understanding being the "unpopular girl" at school, at the pain of trying to grow up, indeed in the total sense that runs through the film of the trials and tribulations of a young woman from a struggling family making sense of the world-as with Ronan's performance, this film, in less skilled hands, would be either mawkish in the humour sense, or depressing in the dramatic department-this balancing act thus, is superb.


Moreover, Lady Bird is a film that understands what it is to be poor and teenaged in modern America, (even if the film's setting does wind the clock back to the early 2000s, in the paranoid and soul searching state of post 9/11, pre-Iraq America), disenfranchised, having to make do with the local college, and with the threat of a dead-end life, or indeed a back and forth between prison and college, as Lady Bird's mother threatens at one point. Yet, this film is also clearly in love with the "Joie de vivre" of being young and teenaged, and exploring possibilities and potentials; there are some truly joyous scenes late in the film as Lady Bird's life begins to open up to possibilities outside of California, as she graduates from high school, as she steps over the cusp of adulthood. Gerwig's story is as essential a record of young teenage life as any one of the pantheon of 80s high school movies, in all its highs and lows.

There is, thus, something beautifully complex and nuanced about Lady Bird as a character and as a film, in every scene, from her outbursts at a school assembly, to the passionate way she throws herself into an audition for a school musical, to the film's denouement in which she begins to realise that her roots in Sacramento, and her family are just as important to her development as the high culture of the New York. This is best seen in her relationship with her mother, which floats between tender and tense, her mother clearly wanting best for Lady Bird, but upset at being unable to help her daughter, even as she rails against the lot she has been given; the denouement, a reconciliation of sorts between daughter and mother, and a realisation of their shared path, is a perfect payoff.

Lady Bird, thus, is a heartfelt, beautifully observed, and perfectly balanced drama-comedy, focusing on a truly memorable, intelligent and fiercely passionate heroine, in a cast of equally well-crafted characters, who you not only want to see succeed, but spread her wings and fly; Lady Bird is, in all respects, an instant classic.

Rating: Highly Recommended.