Lady Bird

RATING: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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ONE SENTENCE SYNOPSIS: In 2002, in the suburbs of Sacramento, 17-year-old, Christine, aka Lady Bird, comes to terms with herself and her relationship with her mother.

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After waiting over two months to watch Lady Bird, this film finally came to my local theater. So, naturally, I had heard how great the film was, including the direction, script, and acting. Winning two Golden Globes (Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for Saoirse Ronan and Best Musical or Comedy), this film does not disappoint. It is refreshingly honest and full of life. In fact, this may be the very first time that I have left a film not feeling dissatisfied in some way with my life. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll watch the Pulp Fiction’s, Bridesmaids’, and There Will Be Blood’s all day long, but they never evoked a sense of contentment in me.  

Anyway, less about me… The biggest thing that standouts out in this film is the script/dialogue. Gerwig’s dialogue is so tangible and unaffected that it adds this rawness to the characters speaking it. Similarly, the plot of the film is thankfully unadulterated by the myriad of generic female-lead, coming-of-age films out there.

Lady Bird has a spirit all her own, rarely letting another person, male or female, dictate the way she acts. In more generic versions of this story, the lead female falls in love with some ideal boy, only to have to change her “less-than-perfect” appearance to meet this boy’s fancies. To some extent, Lady Bird focuses on her appearance, but she does so because it pleases herself, not her crush.

In fact, there is no be-all-end-all for the recipients of Lady Bird’s affections. She enjoys one seemingly perfect relationship with theatre kid, Danny (Lucas Hedges), only to discover him and another boy kissing in a men’s restroom stall–a place she acknowledges she should not be in but that is convenient considering her need to relieve herself. Her next romantic relationship is with Kyle (Timothée Chalamet), an offbeat musician who detracts from the fact that his sole interest is in himself with his outsider, book-loving facade. She eventually leaves him because he misleads her into believing that they both lost their virginity to each other, or as Lady Bird would say, “deflowered each other.” She tries to return to her lovely friend, Julie (Beanie Feldstein), whom Lady Bird had left once she started hanging out with Kyle and his self-absorbed, rich friends, but is only able to once she completely renounces Kyle and his world.  

At the root of Lady Bird’s lack of commitment and inner-peace is her rocky relationship with her mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf). Her mother, a nurse dissatisfied with the fact that she and her husband were never able to move to a better place in Sacramento, sacrifices much to get her daughter into a private Catholic school. Lady Bird gets in trouble several times at school, inciting the anger of Marion, who believes that Lady Bird is ungrateful for the sacrifices that she and the rest of the family make for Lady Bird’s education. It is this sort of tension between mother and daughter that permeates the film.

For once, a film commits to the relationship that matters the most even if it may not seem that glamorous.