LADY BIRD : Tuesday 20th February 2018.

'LADY BIRD' which I saw earlier last week is a highly praised and critically acclaimed film Written and Directed by Greta Gerwig in her first solo Directorial outing. Costing US$10M to make, the film received its World Premier at last September's Telluride Film Festival, and a week later received a standing ovation when it screened at TIFF. Going on general release in the US in early November, the film has so far taken US$53M at the Box Office, and went out on wide release in Australia and the UK just a couple of weeks ago. The film has so far garnered 83 award wins and a further 190 nominations including the pending Academy Awards for which it is up for five including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. It won two Golden Globes, and was nominated for another two, and also gained three SAG Award nods, three BAFTA nods and five International AACTA nominations.

Set in Sacramento, California in 2002, the film tells the coming of age story of Christine 'Lady Bird' McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) who is studying in her last year at Catholic High School. She is seventeen years of age, lives with her parents Marion and Larry (Laurie Metcalfe and Tracy Letts respectively) in a relationship that is somewhat strained with her mother especially, as well as her adopted brother and his girlfriend. Lady Bird yearns to attend a University with culture and adventure somewhere other than Sacramento - ideally on the east coast, and anywhere but Sacramento. Her family is struggling financially - Marion works double shifts as a psychology nurse at the local Hospital to make ends meet, and Larry is unemployed from the IT industry and given his age is unlikely to find another role anytime soon. Marion's chastises Lady Bird as ungrateful for what she has, which creates a constant air of tension between mother and daughter.

Lady Birds best friend at school is Julie Steffans (Beanie Feldstein) and together they join the school theatre programme, and audition for a role each in a school musical production. They each secure a part, as does every other student who auditioned, and Lady Bird is attracted to the male lead Danny O'Neill (Lucas Hedges). Over time they grow fond off each other and begin dating. Danny comes from quite a well to do background and certainly more monied than her own family circumstances.

Lady Bird is invited to spend Thanksgiving Dinner with Danny's family, which attracts the ire of Marion. Sometime later, however, Lady Bird discovers Danny kissing another boy in a passionate embrace in a toilet cubicle, so ending their brief relationship.

At the insistence of her mother, Lady Bird scores a job at a local coffee shop, where she meets young musician and local boys High School student Kyle Scheible (Timothee Chalamet). Fairly soon the pair start dating, and Lady Bird and her bestie Julie begin to see less and less of each other and drift apart. Coinciding with this, Lady Bird befriends Jenna Walton (Odeya Rush) one of the more popular girls in school which will have something to do with her attractiveness, her maturity and her family's wealth. The pair hit it off after Jenna is reprimanded by Sister Sarah (Lois Smith) for wearing too short a skirt to school, and so the girls vandalise the Sisters car to get even.

Lady Bird then drops out of the school theatre production. One day while working at the coffee shop Danny enters and pulls up a seat. Lady Bird cannot look at him and so takes the garbage out the back to avoid any contact. Danny darts around the back and breaks down over his struggles to come out, pleading with Lady Bird not to tell anyone while she offers him a shoulder to cry on. Soon afterwards Lady Bird loses her virginity to Kyle, which ends thirty seconds later! Believing that he was also a virgin, because he said so, he then admits that he has slept with maybe six other girls, and that Lady Bird was not his first. This upsets her. Later in the bathroom at home in conversation with her mother, Lady Bird learns that her father has lost his job and has been fighting depression for a very long time and is on medication.

She begins the application process to numerous east-coast colleges. Her mother is insistent that they cannot afford the fees and the cost of tuition and that she should set her sights on a local college instead. In time after receiving several rejection letters, something positive comes through in the form of a wait list position at a New York college. Her Dad meanwhile helps out secretly with the financial aid applications. The night of the school Prom comes around and with Mum's help a dress is secured. Kyle is her date for the night and she is picked up by him with Jenna an her boyfriend too. Kyle and Jenna decide to give the Prom a miss and make for a party instead. Lady Bird states that she wants to go to the Prom and ask that she be dropped off a Julie's house. There Lady Bird and Julie make up their differences and together attend the Prom and have a blast.

On the day of her eighteenth birthday, her Dad wakes her up with a cup cake with a single candle planted in it. To celebrate her birthday, Lady Bird buys a packet of cigarettes, a lottery ticket and an edition of Playgirl magazine . . . because she now can! Soon afterwards she passes her driving test too, and then sets about redecorating her bedroom. Her mother then discovers that she has been applying to various east-coast colleges without her knowledge, but knowing full well that the family cannot afford it. Out of spite, Marion stops talking with her daughter, despite Lady Bird pleading for conversation and unequivocal apologies. She learns soon afterwards that she has gained a place at a New York college, and with the financial aid package, and some help from her father who has refinanced the house, is able to afford it.

On the day that Lady Bird flies off for the first time to attend college in New York, Marion refuses still to talk to her daughter. She drops off Lady Bird and Larry at the departure terminal and drives off, not even bidding her daughter good luck and farewell. In exiting the airport terminal and driving round the block tears of regret begin to well up in Marion who has a change of heart. She drives back to the departure terminal to be met by her husband, saying that their daughter has already left, and that she has missed her.

In New York Lady Bird unpacks her bags in her new dormitory accommodation. Her father has stashed several letters therein written by her mother to her daughter and then discarded, but salvaged by Larry. Lady Bird thoughtfully reads them all. She then gets involved in the social scene, gets drunk, wakes up in hospital, visits a Sunday church service, and then calls her parents and leaves a message for her mother saying how sorry she is and how much she loves her.

Greta Gerwig has here penned a sort of semi-autobiographical story that makes references to her growing up in Sacramento herself and some of the influences that have impacted upon her life. In doing so she has crafted an insightful warts and all look at the trials and tribulations of adolescence that propels 'Lady Bird' above the other coming of age genre fodder that we are all too often confronted with. The dialogue is grounded in a realism that keeps you invested in the characters and makes you believe what they are saying - it is sharply delivered, emotional, poignant, dramatic, funny and authentic and the wordplay between the characters never misses a beat. Saoirse Ronan delivers her third Academy Award nominated performance and its easy to see why, as she banters too and fro with her mother Laurie Metcalfe who is also up for an Oscar in a support role. Tracy Letts too gives an understated performance as the down trodden weary husband but well meaning and loving father in the all too brief scenes he shares with his family. This is a coming of age film of an ordinary girl, living in an ordinary city and with a fairly ordinary set of circumstances with the complexities of approaching adulthood and the roller coaster of emotions brought on by family, money, peer pressure, sex, school and wanting to follow your own path in life, that all combine to make this a far from ordinary package.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI : Tuesday 2nd January 2018.

'THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI' which I saw earlier this week, following its Australian release on New Years Day, is a black comedy crime drama film Written, Directed and Co-Produced by British/Irish playwright, screen writer and film maker Martin McDonagh whose previous feature film credits are 'In Bruges' and 'Seven Psychopaths'. The film Premiered at the Venice International Film Festival back in early September and then TIFF later that month taking out the top prize - The People's Choice Award. Since then the film has been shown at numerous film festivals and has received widespread critical acclaim, so far picking up 49 award wins and a further 140 nominations including six Golden Globe nominations, four SAG nominations and five AACTA International nods with the winners & grinners yet to be announced. The film opened in the US in early November, went on general release in Australia on 1st January and in the UK on 12th January. Having cost US$12M to make, the film has so far grossed US$24M. Apparently, McDonagh gained inspiration for the premise of the film after seeing billboards about an unsolved crime while travelling 'somewhere down in the Georgia, Florida, Alabama corner'. Of the event that inspired the film, McDonagh stated 'the rage that put a bunch of billboards like that up was palpable and stayed with me'. Eventually he was inspired to create the fictional scenario around such a situation, into the film we have today.

The film follows a mothers plight, who after seven months have passed by without a culprit in her daughter's violent rape and murder case, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a small town shop assistant, makes a bold move and rents three abandoned roadside billboards close by to her home in Ebbing, Missouri. She rents the billboards from Ebbing Advertising managed by Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones) who states that these have not be leased since 1986, and as the new highway cut off that part of town where the billboards are located, anyone driving along that stretch of road would either have to be lost, or be a complete retard! But she proceeds and lays down an initial one months rental fee of US$5,000 and then orders that each sign in bold lettering portray a specific message directed at William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), the town's revered Chief of Police. Each of the signs reads, in sequence, 'Raped while dying', 'And still no arrests?', and 'How come, Chief Willoughby?'. 

Willoughby's second-in-command, Officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) an immature Mummy's Boy with a leaning towards violence, is the first person to come across the billboards as they are being finished off early one evening. He calls Willoughby while he is having dinner with his family, and the next day the pair visit the roadside billboards. It is revealed that Willoughby has terminal pancreatic cancer which only heightens their disapproval of the signage, and the Police Chief thinks this is a personal attack against his character and his standing within the local community. Meanwhile, the towns folk have also become increasingly upset by the three signs, and Mildred and her son Robbie (Lucas Hedges) are threatened and harassed. Mildred however, is unwavering in her stance.

Willoughby visits Mildred at her home and the two talk. He is sympathetic to her cause, but does his best to explain that their investigations into Angela's murder all led to dead ends and for now there is very little else he can do, except to offer her some hope that at a future date something may come to light that will lead to a conviction. Willoughby confides in Mildred that he is terminally ill with cancer, hoping for some sympathy, but he gets none. She replies that his 'secret' is not nearly the secret he believes, and that the whole of Ebbing knows. She further states that the buck stops with him and that he is ultimately responsible for finding her daughters rapist and killer, and if the signs gel him into action then so be it. They won't be much good after he 'croaks'!

Dixon is frustrated and angered by Mildred's lack of respect for the Chief and retaliates by threatening Red, who rented the billboards to her. After discussion with his mother too, Dixon begins getting back at Mildred through her friends and supporters, and arrests her colleague in the shop on exaggerated marijuana possession charges. Mildred confronts Dixon in the Police station.

After an altercation with the vastly overweight town dentist that involves a wobbly tooth, hastily administered anaesthetic, a drill and a fingernail Willoughby brings Mildred in for questioning and threatens to tie her up in red tape for years, when the dentist wishes to press charges against her for assault with a deadly drill. While waiting to be questioned over the incident, there is another heated exchange with Dixon over his alleged beating and torture of a coloured man held in custody. When Dixon is discharged from the interview room and Willoughby is chatting to Mildred, he coughs up blood unexpectedly over her, signifying to them both that his condition is worsening. He is taken by ambulance from the Police Station to the local hospital.

Willoughby discharges himself from hospital as soon as he can, and goes home and takes his two young daughters and his wife Anne (Abbie Cornish) out to the lake for a picnic, where they spend a near perfect afternoon. Later that night, Willoughby goes out to the stable to attend to his horses, and shoots himself in the head, dead. He leaves several suicide notes - one for his wife explaining his actions, and for Mildred which is delivered that day by a distraught Anne to her place of work. In his letter to Mildred he explains that she wasn't a factor in his suicide, but he paid a further US$5,000 in secret to keep the billboards going for another month, finding amusement with the antagonism they would continue to cause her after his death.

Dixon is shocked and distraught by the news of Willoughby's suicide, and violently takes his anger out on Red Welby and his assistant, by forcing entry into the premises, beating him up, and throwing him out of the first floor window onto the street below, and then further beating him on his way back to the Police Station just across the road. All of this is witnessed in broad daylight by Abercrombie (Clarke Peters), Willoughby's replacement, who promptly fires Dixon. Later, the billboards are destroyed by fire in an arson attack, believed to be by Dixon.

Mildred retaliates by fire bombing the Police Station with molotov cocktails under cover of darkness. Believing the Station to be deserted at night, she is unaware that Dixon has gained entry to retrieve a letter left to him also by Willoughby and to return his keys to the place. In the letter Willoughby explains to Dixon that he should learn to let go of his anger and his hatred and be forgiving, loving and see the good in people - the only way of following his dream of becoming a detective. Dixon is able to escape the fire with Angela's case file, but is badly burned in the process. A friend James (Peter Dinklage) witnesses the incident, and fronts up immediately with an alibi for Mildred, claiming that the pair were on a date.

In time, Dixon is discharged from hospital having recovered sufficiently from his burns. Feeling sorry for himself one night and drinking alone in a bar, he overhears a conversation from two guys talking about an incident that one of them was involved in that sounded suspiciously similar to Angela's rape and murder. Dixon takes note of the interstate car number plate and engineers a fight in which he scratches the mans face to gain a DNA sample under his fingernails to compare to the forensics collected at the time of Angela's murder. In the meantime, Mildred is on a dinner date to thank James for his intervention with the alibi, when her abusive and volatile ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes) enters the restaurant with his nineteen year old bimbo girlfriend Penelope (Samara Weaving) and siddles up to the pair. Charlie admits that in a drunken stupor he set light to the billboards.

Sometime later, the results of the DNA tests come back, but prove that their new suspect is no suspect at all, as he wasn't even in the country at the time of Angela's rape and murder, and was overseas on military service. However, the pair conclude that the man must be guilty of some rape crime otherwise why would be be bragging about it in such a cavalier way to his friend in the bar that night. Mildred and Dixon agree to join forces and drive interstate to where the man lives and kill him anyway, but show some reservation in their mission shortly after leaving. They resolve to have made their final decision by the time they reach their eventual destination.

In this film McDonagh has crafted a great story, fine dialogue and captured memorable performances most notably from Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell, but Woody Harrelson deserves a special mention too. McDormand owns this film with an equally best performance that is up there with her Marge Gunderson in 'Fargo', as the determined, unwavering and relentless woman who's on a mission and she really doesn't care who she steps on along the way. Rockwell plays the racist, discriminating, violent and dumbass cop who you really don't want to cross that comes good in the end so much so that your earlier opinion of him is reversed. And Harrelson plays the approachable, warm hearted, forgiving local pillar of the community who is the big fish in the small pond and with whom you can't help but feel sympathy. Imbued with the darkest humour that starts out with a clever and witty moment of inspiration, and gives way to the deep rooted anger and frustration that drives the human spirit to extremes and in particular some of those residents in small town USA. The film offers twists and turns aplenty and explores on many levels anger, frustration, grief, injustice and the power of forgiveness with a number of laugh out loud moments along the way. One of the best films of the year and a worthy contender come Academy Award time and deserving of the accolades already bestowed upon the film, McDonagh, McDormand and Rockwell. A truly original film, you won't be disappointed.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-