In Lady Bird, Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met is not your typ­i­cal dirt­bag boyfriend

Inspired by her own expe­ri­ences grow­ing up in Sacra­men­to, ​“the Mid­west of Cal­i­for­nia”, Lady Bird is Gre­ta Gerwig’s debut fea­ture as solo writer/​director. It chron­i­cles the tit­u­lar teenage girl’s final year at her Catholic school as she los­es and gains friends, boyfriends, and vague cre­ative aspi­ra­tions. Ger­wig and her lead actor Saoirse Ronan bring a nuanced, non-judge­men­tal approach to the com­ing-of-age com­e­dy, and much has already been made of its res­o­nance, espe­cial­ly for women of Gerwig’s age.

One of the most relat­able aspects of the film – for women who are attract­ed to men, at least – is Lady Bird’s fas­ci­na­tion with (and sub­se­quent dis­ap­point­ment by) her chain-smok­ing, leather-jack­et wear­ing boyfriend Kyle, played to small-town snob per­fec­tion by Tim­o­th­ée Chalamet.

When we first meet Kyle, he’s care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ing his mys­te­ri­ous per­sona, nar­row­ly set apart from the cool groups he is tan­gen­tial­ly asso­ci­at­ed with. We see him play­ing bass (in a band with a French name, no less) at a house par­ty, then lat­er, pos­ing out­side the cof­fee shop where Lady Bird has a sum­mer job – dressed all in black, read­ing The People’s His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States.

Dur­ing their flir­ta­tion he launch­es into an unprompt­ed mono­logue. He ​“doesn’t like mon­ey,” and is ​“try­ing to get as far as pos­si­ble on bar­ter­ing alone,” and warns Lady Bird that if she were to get a mobile phone, it would be used by the gov­ern­ment to spy on her. In stark con­trast to his fresh-faced, sun­light-dap­pled appear­ance in Call Me by Your Name, Chalamet’s cheru­bic fea­tures are twist­ed into an affect­ed bad-boy gri­mace, teamed with grown-out greasy hair and a roll-up cig­a­rette hang­ing from his lips at all times.

Kyle is recog­nis­able as the crush arche­type formed in our ear­ly teens and car­ried through into the adult dat­ing world, even though we should know bet­ter; the flop­py-fringed gui­tar play­er that is qui­et­ly exempt from our usu­al­ly strict vet­ting of Tin­der match­es. Chalamet’s exact per­for­mance and the details of his char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion hit hard, but Lady Bird’s fol­low­ing of him into inevitable dis­ap­point­ment hits hard­er. He is every clichéd out­sider-type boy that we roll our eyes at but end up going home with anyway.

He is descend­ed from from a long line of dirt­bag boyfriends in teen and com­ing-of-age cin­e­ma: Think Heath Ledger’s chain-smok­ing hot­tie in 10 Things I Hate About You, so mys­te­ri­ous that he’s the sub­ject of school rumours that he once ate a live duck. Or Paul Rudd in Clue­less, whose irre­sistible charm appar­ent­ly stems from his opin­ion­at­ed trash­ing of every­thing Ali­cia Silverstone’s Cher holds dear. There’s also the flipped, night­mare ver­sion of these bad boys that are just wait­ing for a good girl to to turn them right: Chris­t­ian Slater’s mass-mur­der­ing lon­er JD from Heathers, or Adam Brody’s indie rock singer-turned-satanist creep from Jennifer’s Body.

The attrac­tive­ness of all these boys is ampli­fied because they are small town spe­cif­ic. They share DNA with film’s clas­sic rebel out­siders, but their low­ly con­text makes them shine brighter, and seem more appeal­ing. Our con­tin­ued attrac­tion to them is some­thing that we maybe should grow out of, just as we grow out of our small towns.

One of the film’s major themes is Lady Bird’s desire to break free of Sacra­men­to and the work­ing class Catholic world of her par­ents, and on the sur­face Kyle appears to her as much of a sym­bol of the cul­tured out­side world that she craves to be a part of as her appli­ca­tions to east coast lib­er­al arts col­leges. Lady Bird’s attrac­tion to Kyle is there­fore also recog­nis­able as a kind of aspi­ra­tional crush: She already has her own pre­ten­tious foibles – her self-giv­en name, her claim to be ​“from the wrong side of the tracks” – and prox­im­i­ty to Kyle is anoth­er short­cut to the aloof cool­ness that she yearns for. He’s cute, sure, but he’s a cypher for some­thing else that’s more impor­tant to her.

When Lady Bird even­tu­al­ly ditch­es Kyle, walk­ing away from him and his cool friends before prom, it’s qui­et­ly tri­umphant. She ends up going to the dance with her best friend Julie – some­one she can be her­self around, who sings along to Count­ing Crows with her instead of mock­ing their songs when they come on the radio. It’s a step towards the cul­ti­va­tion of her true, com­plex self that is whol­ly recog­nis­able, com­pa­ra­ble to how count­less num­bers of us shunned imma­ture boys for lon­er seniors who liked The Smiths – only to realise that we pre­ferred our own taste in music any­way. Her approach to try­ing and fail­ing and learn­ing is summed up with her assess­ment after sex with Kyle that ​“I found that when it hap­pened, I real­ly liked dry hump­ing a lot more.” It’s an impor­tant turn­ing point, when self-actu­al­i­sa­tion takes pri­or­i­ty over – or maybe just untan­gles from – quick-hit desire.

The film con­cludes with Lady Bird mov­ing out of her par­ents’ house, paint­ing over Kyle’s sharpie-scrawled name on her child­hood bed­room wall, and head­ing to col­lege in New York. As in many com­ing-of-age films, she’s seen shed­ding her small town self for a new ver­sion of her­self in the big city, all the more sig­nif­i­cant as she’s final­ly let­ting go of the expec­ta­tions of oth­ers – her moth­er, her boyfriends – and set­ting them for her­self. Cru­cial­ly, the cul­mi­na­tion of her char­ac­ter arc doesn’t rely on her roman­tic suc­cess, or her trans­for­ma­tion of the bad boy. In Lady Bird, the douchebag remains a douchebag, albeit one who is hel­la cute.