Lady Bird (2017)

• Year: 2017
• Released: 01 Dec 2017
• Country: United States
• Adwords: Nominated for 5 Oscars. 122 wins & 229 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4925292/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lady_bird
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/lady-bird
• Available in: 720p, 1080p, 720p
• Language: English, Spanish
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Runtime: 94 min
• Writer: Greta Gerwig
• Director: Greta Gerwig
• Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts
• Keywords: woman director, friendship, coming of age, teenage girl, best friend,

	7.4/10
	93/100
	99% – Critics
	79% – Audience

Lady Bird Storyline

Christine McPherson’s (Saoirse Ronan’s) senior year of high school in 2002/03 is presented, she the second of two children of Larry (Tracy Letts) and Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf). Outwardly, she hates most aspects of her life. She hates that they have long lived a life of barely scraping by, their situation all the worse now as they as a collective are a victim of the poor economy. That economic reality has led to Larry recently being laid off, Marion needing to work double shifts as a counselor at a psychiatric hospital just to keep their heads above water, and Christine’s brother Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues) and his girlfriend Shelly Yuhan (Marielle Scott) moving back home in the McPhersons’ small and already overcrowded house with one bathroom now for five people. She hates that what her parents have decided to spend on her within their already tight budget is an expensive Catholic private school education at Immaculate Heart, solely because Miguel witnessed long ago some violence outside Sacramento High School, where she would have gone otherwise. At Immaculate Heart, she has only two friends, equally poor Julie Steffans (Beanie Feldstein), they playing upon their outsider status. She hates living in Sacramento, she who is determined to go to a liberal arts college back east, preferably New York City, using financial aid rather than go to a California college such as nearby UC Davis, for which she would eligible for an in-state reduction in tuition, that option already barely affordable. Whether she will even get into college is questionable as she has placed little effort into her school work despite being bright, except perhaps in math. But arguably what she hates the most is her strained relationship with her mother, Marion who is always bad cop to Larry’s good cop in the parenting role. Marion and Christine’s strained relationship is exacerbated by both being strong willed people. Christine believes that her mother may love her because she has to, but truly doesn’t like her. In not wanting to take things from her mother out of a natural course of family, Christine has decided to rename herself “Lady Bird”, something she wants everyone to call her from now on. As Lady Bird goes through some major events her senior year – from discovering a new school extracurricular activity which includes boys from neighboring St. Francis Xavier, to testing the waters of dating, possible first love, and the prospect of sex, to wanting to be part of the in-crowd, to truly placing some effort into her short term post-secondary dreams – she and Marion may only have a short period of time to express their true love for each other, family or not, before it’s too late.

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Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?

When Christine McPherson, or Lady Bird as she prefers to be called, discovers she has been accepted into Public Ivy UC Davis, she curls her lip in disgust; it’s a mere thirty minutes away, when really she dreams leaving her nest and flying away to the Big Apple, or at the very least Connecticut. Her entire existence serves as an affront to the modest Sacramento, her style a personal rebellion. The only thing pinker than her streaked hair or prom dress is the cast she sports after flinging herself out of the car mid-argument in the opening vignette, in protest of her mother’s parental suffocation. It’s a wonderful scene of conflicting perspectives and overlapping dialogue, all timed to perfection by a mother and daughter each trying to get their own word in.

It helps that Saoirse Ronan is capable of tuning into any frequency that the film calls for. In truth, she’s better coy than cutting and sardonic anyway, as if you feel a huge weight lift off her shoulders in the quieter moments where she isn’t keeping up the facade. When she’s in the classroom trying to impress the ‘cool’ girls, her neck is craned forward and her eyes dart around to make sure everyone is hearing and seeing this. But watch her fumble through an approach to a potential crush (both times) and you see the self-consciousness cascade from inside her, and it feels real.

In many instances it is the dialogue’s authenticity that shines through, juggling the messy and often hilarious contradictions of a teenager’s mind: Lady Bird and her best friend Julie throw dirty looks and scoff at the popular Jenna’s petrol-guzzling land rover, only to rapidly switch tack and gush at how pretty she is. Later they are lying on their backs with legs up on the wall, munching on communion wafers (“They’re not consecrated.”) and barely holding in their laughter as they compare their delicate usage of shower handles. The camera zeroes in on this odd little vignette through an upside-down overhead shot, and it is the perfect encapsulation of the film’s milieu, a lull in the day of a small-town Catholic school for two girls who only dream of graduation and beyond, and must meanwhile entertain themselves.

Lady Bird fends off her micromanaging mum, all the while crossing paths with the usual caricatures, although Gerwig tries her best to sidestep expectations. Amongst them is queen bee Jenna (who’s cooler than we expect, and plainer in her ambitions – not that there’s anything wrong with that), first crush Danny who is eventually revealed to be gay, and second crush Kyle, who flirts the line between hilarious and infuriating with his constant posturing. The intention behind the mockery is to highlight the hypocrisy of the upper middle class, but Gerwig makes him too easy a punching bag, constantly sporting a cigarette (hand-rolled, naturally) and a Howard Zinn book but not a cellphone (although he whips one out to make detour before prom, further drawing attention to his phoniness). Then again, isn’t he exactly the dreamy type that Lady Bird would fall for, only to look back on as Christine and groan as the audience does?

Lady Bird believes she has already outgrown Sacramento, and merely asks for the room to spread her wings, but her mother, in a searing performance by Laurie Metcalf, only asks for her to be considerate. Neither are entirely in the wrong. The film’s journey is an exercise in empathy building, for two women to slowly but surely see the other’s perspective, like how she confronts Danny with a hostile expression but ends up as a shoulder to cry on. Or, after an underwhelming first time, the camera pauses to consider Kyle’s father, who has worked his whole life to ensure that his child has a future to look forward to, and is now wasting away. Eventually, one must let go of her fear, and the other, her anger. Standing in New York, the centre of the world, she considers her modest nest, Sacramento.

A pretty ordinary teenager with a very difficult and hyper-critical mother.

“Lady Bird” suffers from a curse all Oscar-hyped films have….when you have heard so much about them for so long you can’t help but feel a tiny bit disappointed. Now I am NOT saying it’s a bad film or I disliked it…but the hype really made it tougher to love the movie more….something that the filmmakers have no responsibility for in any way.

Apart from all the great press and many Oscar nominations, I actually knew very little about the movie. Heck, for a little time I thought it was all about LBJ’s wife!! It turns out to be a dandy story about a rather typical teenage girl…facing a few typical problems as well as a mother who is very uptight and critical.

So what did I like about the film? Mostly the acting…which seemed very real. In particular, while I hated Laurie Metcalf’s character (the mother was very annoying and easy to hate), she did a GREAT job with her…and showed she’s more than just a lady who was a regular on “Roseanne”. Many other nice performances as well….and I like how the staff at the Catholic school were NOT all monolithic and angry but represented all sorts of folks. Overall, worth seeing and a good film that suffers a tad due to super-high expectations from me…but hopefully not you.

Sassy coming of age story

Laurie Metcalf and Saiorse Ronan playing mother and daughter in this coming of age story set in Sacramento, California. Young Ms. Ronan has quite the senior year and deals with all kinds of issues before going off to college.

It usually works out this way, that one parent is in the role of disciplinarian while the other is kind of the soft touch. I well recall in my brother-in-law’s family my sister-in-law did the disciplining while my brother was the soft touch with the kids. Sometimes that places undue hardship on the one who enforces the rules. Something that Laurie Metcalf is conscious of. Especially when Ronan goes to dear old dad to soften the blows and dad is played by Tracy Letts.

Sex is very important as the family really likes a boy from her theater group Lucas Hedges. He’s like the perfect All-American Catholic youth from the parochial school. Due to issues on Hedges’s part it can never be with them though they try.

Not getting Hedges, Ronan settles on Timothee Chalamet to be her one and only first. He is, but there’s a lot less to Chalamet than meets the eye.

Back in the 80s there was this great film Heaven Help Us which really took Catholic education to the cleaners. It takes a few hits here, but the nuns are really fleshed out 3 dimensional characters and some actually possess a bit of the wisdom their calling says they should develop.

Lady Bird earned Oscar nominations for Ronan and Metcalf for Best Actress and Supporting Actress. Additionally it was up for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

Most of all the audience will truly root for Saiorse Ronan to make some sense out of this we call life. Or at least figure some of it out.