'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-
