Lady Bird (2017)

Lady Bird is the movie The Edge Of Seventeen was supposed to be – a witty, wildly insightful look at the experience of being a teenage girl in America. Greta Gerwig (the talented actress both wrote and directed) has created a film that holds the power of a Rushmore or early François Truffaut, in that it redefines a cinematic approach to telling stories about young adulthood that is both intelligent and sensitive.

Saoirse Ronan plays the titular Lady Bird (well, at least that’s what she wants to be called), an eccentric and endearing high school senior attending Catholic school in 2002 Sacramento (this odd specificity of time and place is a huge component of the film, which has a wonderful provinciality). Lady Bird resents her lower middle class surroundings (she calls Sacramento the Midwest of California) and longs to attend college in New York City, where presumably everyone will be intellectual and arty and provocative.

Lady Bird doesn’t follow any single plot arc, but functions as a revealing character study. We watch as Lady Bird struggles with her strong-willed mother (a spectacular Laurie Metcalf), pursues doomed relationships, and navigates friendship drama. We see her try out for the school play, get drunk, lose her virginity, start her first job, charging ass-backwards through the rites of passage that mark her transition from childhood to adulthood. Gerwig is also interested in the effects shifting economic realities have on Lady Bird and her family. Financial uncertainty and class distinctions are ever-present threats that bleed into their already fraught relationships.

Several qualities set Lady Bird apart from other high school comedy-dramas. Perhaps most importantly, it is wildly funny (and without resorting to easy laughs). Gerwig’s keen sense of humor is never at the expense of the characters, but instead deepens our understanding of them. This is a natural extension of another of Lady Bird’s virtues, which is that the film has such an obvious and deeply felt affection for all of its characters. From Lady Bird’s best friend Julie (a wonderfully charming Beanie Feldstein), to her dysfunctional but very lovable family, to bit parts like the nuns and teachers at her school, every character is vividly sketched. I’d certainly trade the Marvel Extended Universe for 10 more Lady Bird spinoffs that could follow, for example, the JV football coach forced to direct the school play.

Lady Bird is exceptionally enjoyable, poignant filmmaking. Ronan is spectacular as Lady Bird, a character who will undoubtedly resonate with anyone familiar with the euphoric highs and catastrophic lows of adolescence. Coming out of the theater, audiences will certainly continue thinking about Lady Bird‘s climatic scenes, as well as the relationships which receive the most screen time (particularly the complicated dynamic between Lady Bird and her mother). But, viewers may be surprised that some of the smaller, quieter scenes also stay with them: a young man pouring out his heart in the alleyway behind a coffee shop, a struggling father’s reaction to a disheartening job interview, the emotional candor of a depressed priest. These subtle, sublime moments are the mark of a great film.