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LADY BIRD | FILM REVIEW
****
Dir: Greta Gerwig
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Laure Metcalfe, Tracy Letts
(15, 1hr 34 mins)
Indie darling actress Greta Gerwig, superb in films like Mistress America, Frances Ha and 20th Century Women, goes behind the camera to write and direct this brilliantly observed coming-of-age story . Saoirse Ronan plays Christine, who wants to be known as Lady Bird, a girl about to go away to college and desperate to go to New York. Her parents, an excellent Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts, cannot afford her dream college experience, but Lady Bird’s mind is set on it.
Her mother is a nurse struggling to make ends meet, her father a kindly soul unable to get a job and recovering from a nervous breakdown and bouts of depression. Lady Bird is also steering her way through the treacherous waters of a Catholic high school run by nun Lois Smith. She is best friends with Julie, winningly played by Beanie Feldstein. They share lots in common, but she is not one of the cool girls Ronan falls under the spell of. She also has to deal with those typical early teenage relationships with boys, even falling for the wrong one twice; earnest but apparently asexual drama student Lucas Hedges, and the too-cool-for-school muso and faux-intellectual Timothy Chalamet, as the superbly observed, heartbreaking and funny script unravels.
For all her sass Lady Bird is deeply naive. Ronan captures all that teenage angst with believably frustrating ease, desperate to be mature but without the life skills to deal with what life throws at her. Her relationship with her mother is at the heart of the film; she and Metcalf spark brilliantly off each other, their relationship fractious but warm, from an opening car journey to a moving farewell, Metcalf runs the gamut of maternal emotion. Gerwig’s script is the reason why it all works. It’s well observed, painfully real, and under her direction the actors sing. The dialogue isn’t trite, with a lot of heartbreak in the cracks but Lady Bird is also winningly funny and coarse. A coming-of-age film may well be well-worn territory, but Gerwig’s film feels joyous and new.
Opens February 16