Lets get this out of the way: As the awards season gathers pace, Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut Lady Bird is in severe danger of being overhyped. Be warned, it’s the kind of modest, indie coming-of-age story we’ve seen a million times. Set in a vaguely nostalgic 2002 and 2003, it’s episodic and stylistically simple, with a guitar-heavy soundtrack. It hits the familiar beats: Prom Night, painful conflicts with parents and falling outs with best friends; the pursuit of popularity, the loss of virginity and the wisdom that comes when grand dreams crunch up against reality. But Lady Bird is written, directed and performed with such tenderness, spiky humour and attention to detail, that it’s a delight to behold.
Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is a dramatic and somewhat pretentious 17-year-old who insists on being called by the name ‘Lady Bird’. Her kind-hearted father, Larry (Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts), is a computer programmer struggling with depression and unemployment. Her overworked mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf), puts in double shifts as a nurse to support the family and send Christine to a Catholic school, where she’s a merely mediocre student. It’s no wonder that Marion rolls her eyes in exasperation whenever Christine talks about her dreams of attending an expensive East Coast college, far away from the dull but pretty suburbs where they live. (“Sacramento is like the mid-west of California,” Christine whines, just like another discontented Sacramento character this year, Ben Stiller’s Brad in Brad’s Status.) And yet Lady Birdplays like an inadvertent love letter to the humble charms of that very particular place in America.
Read the full review here at SBS Movies.
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