Lady Bird

UK Release Date. 23 February 2018
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 34 mins
Director. Greta Gerwig
Cast. Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts, Laurie Metcalf, Saoirse Ronan.

Rating. 72%

Review.

Greta Gerwig's solo directorial debut centres on Christine McPherson - the eponymous Lady Bird - a fiercely independent teenager who is desperate to leave her hometown of Sacramento, California and forge her own life in New York.

The cinematic odyssey charting youth to maturity isn't always the most engaging, let alone the most authentic. Who are these on-screen teenagers with the coolest of clothes and zeitgeist bedrooms? Young adults with an expansive vocabulary and a predilection for expressive, heartfelt conversations. Thankfully, Lady Bird avoids these tropes for the most part. Instead, the film is raw and honest.

Saoirse Ronan delivers an impressive performance as Lady Bird. She captures the perfect balance between being sensitive, melodramatic and, well, just normal. She endures a constant battle between her ego and her sentimentality. Ronan finds effervescent joy in Lady Bird's passions but equally embraces the moments when she can be truly terrible... more often than not to her mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalfe). 

Metcalfe, essentially a supporting character as Lady Bird's long-suffering and overly-critical mother, is undoubtedly the standout performance. A hard working nurse, Marion appears to be the pragmatic voice of the family. Metcalfe owns the role, and delivers a roller coaster of emotions, from desperation to exasperation, and more poignantly, happiness to sadness. Or should that be sadness to happiness? While the film is ostensibly a coming of age story, it wouldn't be half as compelling were it not for the perfect portrayal of a frustratingly imperfect mother and daughter relationship.

Gerwig's direction is strong, confident and mature. The cinematography (by director of photography Sam Levy) is lovely, reminiscent of a warm and gentle autumn sun. Gerwig's whimsical, heartfelt screenplay finds playful moments in every single scene but also lingers on scenes long enough to highlight genuine anguish. 

The result, Lady Bird, is the perfect tale of the imperfect teenage life.