An exquisite coming-of-age drama
Lady Bird 15 cert, 94 min
Dir Greta Gerwig Starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen Mckinley Henderson, Lois Smith
Imagine a world without film awards. Bask in it, briefly, before the real one re-intrudes. Such a utopia might receive a film as small, modest and accomplished as Lady Bird as an object to be cherished in its own right, rather than as a pretext for winning some trophies. It’s up for three Baftas and five Oscars, and if these have any value at all, it’s simply to make sure that we all know about it.
Greta Gerwig wrote and directed this piece, basing it on her memories as a Catholic schoolgirl growing up in Sacramento at the turn of the century. It’s her directing debut, but not her writing debut: on top of the starring roles she took in Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (2012) and Mistress America (2015), she wrote those films with him, as well as several earlier in her career.
The performance she gets from Saoirse Ronan, playing roughly a teenage version of her director, is every bit as nuanced and appealing as the acting work Gerwig has turned in herself – including her part in 2016’s wonderful 20th Century Women, which did for Santa Barbara something like what this one does for Sacramento.
As the film begins, Ronan’s character is 17, and has been dubbing herself Lady Bird, abandoning the Christine attempted by her parents, who are a nurse (Laurie Metcalf) and computer programmer (Tracy Letts) much like Gerwig’s own folks. She’s on the point of applying to college, which she wants to be as far away from Sacramento, her Catholic education and her oversolicitous mother as geographically possible: ideally New York, which she idolises, in a Manhattan-ish way, right out of proportion.
The last phases of her school life brim with arbitrary projects but drift into boredom; she is interested in boys, but they’re usually the wrong ones, and has a best friend, Julie (a perfect Beanie Feldstein), whom she takes for granted. These are the basic building blocks of the story, familiar from teen tales since the John Hughes era.
It’s a rare specificity that Gerwig has already learned to bestow. When Lady Bird’s headmistress, a benign nun wittily played by 87-year-old Lois Smith, hears her say the words love and attention, she brackets the concepts together, as if they were synonyms. It’s an arresting insight: when we love someone, or something, we pay it attention. And we love those who pay attention back. It feels, too, like the model for Gerwig’s craft. She loves all these characters, and the sun setting over Sacramento’s bridges, and the kind of outfits different characters might wear to the senior prom, and
From the start, it’s the mother-daughter relationship to which Gerwig pays most attention
pays them all heed. Take Danny (Lucas Hedges), an adorable drama nerd towards whom Lady Bird gravitates, who says he respects her too much to fondle her boobs, when you have a distinct hunch she’d prefer him just to go for it. Her brother Miguel (Jordan Rodriguez) and his live-in girlfriend Shelly (Marielle Scott) are edgy, inarticulate types with piercings, who dress alike and are usually to be found giving every situation, including the Sondheim musical in which Lady Bird sunnily enrols, the same suspicious look.
Letts offers a sweet, rumpled portrait of the dad, a quiet soul whose attitude to becoming unemployed is one of rueful resignation, distinguishing him from Metcalf ’s Marion, who plays this up as a tragic disaster, setting her jaw even more than usually to woebegone.
From the start, it’s the motherdaughter relationship to which Gerwig pays most attention. The first shot has them face-to-face on a hotel bed, which Marion then smooths over, despite Lady Bird’s protestations that it’s not her job. Their ability to flip from pleasant intimacy to blazing rows in seconds, and sometimes back again, is beautifully observed, which is to say beautifully directed and played: you can feel every argument brewing just from the precise angle of Ronan’s gaze, or the shades of indignation a peerless Metcalf can broadcast using little more than her chin.
In many ways Lady Bird hasn’t appreciated, Marion has been there, fretting over her daughter’s clothes, making do and mending, reminding her constantly of their economic class. Marion is an insatiable martyr of thrift, a trait Lady Bird refuses to inherit, which is why they fight so often.
And yet, they could hardly need each other more. True to its title, this film is about a nest, every twig used to build it, and what flying out of it might cost, to parents and child alike. The detail is in those twigs, and if Gerwig is capable of all this in a debut, who knows what wooden palaces she’ll erect for us next.