Watch out for . . .

GRETA GERWIG, who has directed her first major film: a sublime coming-ofage drama, like no other I have seen in years, called Lady Bird. Gerwig wrote the film, which is set in her hometown of Sacramento. It features Saoirse Ronan playing a young woman who describes her family as coming from the wrong side of the tracks, in her last year at high school before she heads off to university. Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts play her parents, with Lucas Hedges (the Oscar-nominated young man who was so good in last season’s Manchester By The Sea) as a beau she pursues. Ronan and Metcalf’s characters clash constantly and I was struck by how Gerwig (pictured below) can turn commonplace occurrences into the very stuff of life. It’s one of my favourite films of the year. You can catch it at the BFI London Film Festival next month. SAOIRSE RONAN, who also stars in Dominic Cooke’s superb exploration of the heartache surrounding a newlywed couple’s inability to communicate, and how it dooms their relationship, in Ian McEwan’s adapation of his novella On Chesil Beach. Ronan and Billy Howle are excellent as the graduates who can’t articulate their desires. Anne-Marie Duff, Adrian Scarborough, Emily Watson and Samuel West play the two sets of parents and do what only great British actors can: capture them instantly. The film was being shown in Toronto last night and will have a gala showing at the BFI LFF. ROSAMUND PIKE and Christian Bale, who give outstanding performances — among the best this year — in Scott Cooper’s great Western, Hostiles. It’s about a woman, broken after a family tragedy, who meets a U.S. cavalry captain charged with taking a Cheyenne chieftain on a perilous journey to his tribe’s hunting grounds. Pike has never been better.