Lady Bird

In order for a “coming of age” film to be good, the audience must see themselves in the protagonist.  Look upon them with fear that they’ll make decisions that will drive them to an unhappy existence.  And we should feel that way because, if the film is good, we’ll fall-in-love with the child they are, and person they can become.  We’ll feel as their protector – powerless to stop them from getting hurt; powerless to truly control their fate.  Much like any parent of a child.  And when they make it through, when they become the person we hope for, we feel such overwhelming relief…and pride.

Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird succeeds in ways that many coming-of-age films fail.  We get to watch the main character in the ever important seventeenth year of her life as she’s tested through relationships, both new and always.  How those relationships shape her beliefs, and how those beliefs reveal to her the beauty of the home she so desperately wants to leave.

Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is wildly loving, deeply opinionated and strong-willed.  She attends an all girls Catholic High School where she excels at some things, but not all, and none well enough to hang hopes on.  She dreams with her best-friend, Julie (Beanie Feldstein), of escape from their boring lives, even it means an escape from their small, unimpressive homes, to the best their world of Sacramento, California has to offer.   Her home life consists of daily spats with her equally strong- willed and loving mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf).  Her father, Larry (Tracy Letts), has just lost his job in the changing economy (the film takes place in the year 2002), and is depressed, though he’s the “nice” parent as Marion puts it.  Lady Bird doesn’t fight with her father because he’s so different from her, and that makes her adore him unconditionally.  She has a brother of Latin descent; I’m not sure if he’s adopted as the film never states so, but it doesn’t matter, he’s her brother.  The brother and his girlfriend live with the McPherson family, former graduates of Berkeley, yet only able to find jobs bagging groceries.  Lady Bird is unaware if she’ll even get to go to such an esteemed school in order to be let down by the job market.  But such a school is far away, and that is exactly what she’ll try for.

She joins her high school theater program, which is merged with a Catholic all boy’s high school in the same area.  In so doing she meets Danny (Lucas Hedges), and falls in the sweetest kind of young love there is.  After that doesn’t work for reasons I won’t reveal, she meets Kyle (Timothee Chalamet), an intellectual bad boy.  Instead of puppy-love, she abandons her best friend for his friends and eventually loses her virginity to him.  After the disappointing aftermath of sex, in which it’s Kyle that disappoints her the most, she feels adrift.  She’s lost her best friend, constantly revolts against her mother, and appears desperate for significance, a path that could lead to self-destruction.  Except that’s not how life really works; it may feel that way at seventeen, but the world does not end.  There’s the next day and the one after.  Time and patience open her eyes to her own person, which guides her to becoming the best version of herself.  The one that must face the world.

Saoirse Ronan is once again remarkable, commanding the screen at twenty-three years old better than most actors alive.  She makes Lady Bird a perfectly grounded and eccentric individual; impossible to not revere.  Metcalf is her match in every way, turning in the best performance of her career and solidifying her name next to an Oscar nomination, right along side Ronan.  Letts plays the patriarch of the family with such a warming calm that he’s a delight.  Equally delightful is Feldstein as Julie, providing the only real companionship that Lady Bird needs.  I also loved Lucas Hedges coming off last year’s breakout Manchester By The Sea; he makes his character worthy of his own film.  I did find Charlamet, as Kyle, to be a little too much of a caricature, and there are others like him in the film.  But the memories of our childhood are full of those people.

Gerwig’s dialogue feels lived-in though all its nuances, finding a balance that feels like we’re watching lives unfold.  There’s a wonderful exchange in which a teacher at Lady Bird’s school explains how the college-required essay Lady Bird wrote about the town she wants to leave…was written with love.  Lady Bird is confused by this and retorts that she just pays attention to details.  Unwavering, her teacher states that attention and love can be one in the same. The setting of the film, shot on location in Sacramento, is one of sun-kissed memories that, while insignificant to Lady Bird as she passes through them, will become warm embraces when revisited in her mind. In appreciation and respect.

The name of “Lady Bird” is of crucial significance too; a rebellion against her mother and Sacramento.  The name of a child, a teenager we all were once.  When she finally goes by the name of Christine, the name given to her by her mother and father, we know the girl is gone.  There are no illusions that the adult won’t continue to make mistakes, fail, or get hurt.  But we know she’s ready to face it now.  We know she has “come of age.”  And our hearts are full.

Grade: A