Lady Bird – first look review

As an actor, the sen­si­bil­i­ty that Gre­ta Ger­wig brings is a ton­ic. She is enter­tain­ing and pained by life’s dif­fi­cul­ties. She is ener­getic and earnest. She does not affect cool­ness, clev­er­ness or any aloof state that peo­ple who are less secure about their human­i­ty grasp to save face. No. Whether work­ing with Joe Swan­berg, Noah Baum­bach or Whit Still­man, Ger­wig brings an endear­ing, round­ed presence.

What a joy, then, to dis­cov­er that she is equal­ly capa­ble at flood­ing a film with twist­ed livewire com­plex­i­ty. Years spent co-writ­ing movies with Baum­bach has clear­ly paved the way for her ful­ly-formed solo direc­to­r­i­al debut, Lady Bird.

This com­ing-of-age sto­ry, set in 2002, takes the broad details of Gerwig’s upbring­ing in Sacra­men­to, Cal­i­for­nia and uses them to cre­ate moments full of spiky humour, all the while sketch­ing a fam­i­ly set-up loaded with strug­gle. Gerwig’s avatar is one of the most ver­sa­tile young female actors work­ing today. Saoirse Ronan’s char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of 17-year-old Chris­tine ​“Lady Bird” McPher­son has the force­ful momen­tum of a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter and the hot-blood­ed pas­sion of, well, a teenage girl.

Lady Bird is ​“from the wrong side of the tracks”, which means that unlike the rich kids at her Catholic School, her fam­i­ly is scrap­ing by on mum’s nurse’s salary. She has no inter­est in being defined by her socioe­co­nom­ic brack­et and clash­es with her moth­er over every­thing. Ronan whirl­winds through every scene, bristling with a fer­al but elo­quent desire for experience.

A stan­dard grow­ing pains set-up is giv­en orig­i­nal­i­ty by a glo­ri­ous script, writ­ten with rel­ish for odd vocab­u­lary choic­es and attuned to the faux casu­al way some teenagers present. ​“You’re very dex­ter­ous with that,” says Lady Bird com­pli­ment­ing the boy about to take her vir­gin­i­ty as he puts on a con­dom. The boy is Kyle (Call Me By Your Name’s Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met) who styles him­self as a dreamy intel­lec­tu­al artist by drain­ing his voice of all feel­ing and say­ing things like, ​“The gov­ern­ment didn’t have to put track­ing devices on us, we bought them and put them in our­selves,” about mobile phones.

Laughs come fast and are gen­er­ous­ly dis­trib­uted among the cast. Abrupt edit­ing cre­ates an enjoy­able momen­tum. Ronan spins the film around her mood which can switch in 10 dif­fer­ent direc­tions in the space of a scene. She ping-pongs between the rela­tion­ships that nur­ture her and pur­su­ing upward mobil­i­ty with the rich kids. The most mem­o­rable moments are with the nur­tur­ers. Tracey Letts is heart­break­ing as Lady Bird’s dad, an unem­ployed com­put­er pro­gram­mer try­ing not to adver­tise his depression.

Lau­rie Met­calf as her mum book­ends the film, as well as adding her weight to its cen­tre. With her obses­sive focus on sur­vival, she can­not brook her daughter’s imprac­ti­cal urges. The argu­ments between the two are real, famil­iar, and irrec­on­cil­able in the philo­soph­i­cal dis­tance between the two oppo­nents. In oth­er words, Ger­wig nails how moth­ers and daugh­ters argue – at each other’s throats. Because of the tonal breadth of the film, dif­fer­ent shades of feel­ing are found in each grudge match. Love as a com­bat­ive war of words is an ener­gis­ing force.