Lady Bird

Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2017) is difficult to categorize. It’s a character film. It’s about a young woman’s coming of age, to an extent.  She’s a high school senior struggling to establish herself as an individual and take on an identity.  She argues constantly with her mother, who picks mercilessly at her, assuring her that she is less than what she ought to be.  In an early scene, the daughter throws herself out of a moving car to escape her mother’s criticism. Her mother is at first an unsympathetic character, but gradually we see that there is more to her than endless carping.  Her husband has lost his job and is depressed.  They have serious money issues.  They took in a young man before the movie began and treat him as a son.  He lives in their house with his girlfriend.  The mother is a psychiatric nurse, and often one senses that she needs a nurse herself.

The film deliberately lacks momentum and pacing.  Instead, it follows developments in Lady Bird’s life (her real name is Caroline but she wants to be called Lady Bird).  In an interview, Director Gerwig stated that Truffaut’s The 400 Blows was an influence, and one can see this in her film, in the way it moves along focused on its main character. 

Lady Bird attends a Catholic high school in Sacramento, where she lives with her family.  The film gently satirizes the school and the nuns and priest who run it, yet it expresses respect and affection for them too. One of the priests suffers from depression and withdraws from directing a school play.  His replacement, a school coach, approaches directing as he would coaching.  Lady Bird enjoys being in the play, and she is inclined towards the arts though she doesn’t seem talented in any particular area, except perhaps writing. A teacher tells her that her love of Sacramento is evident in everything she writes.  This is a surprise to Lady Bird, who thinks she hates Sacramento.  But you suspect she appreciates the praise.

As a way of asserting her independence, she wants to apply to an eastern college.  Her mother forbids this, claiming that the family cannot afford the tuition and that she must attend a California school. Lady Bird secretly applies to several schools in the east, with her father’s help.

What’s remarkable about Lady Bird is exactly nothing.  She’s trying to grow up, to become herself, chafing against family and school, desiring love and independence.  She’s suffers through the same experiences many of us endured at her age.  She tries on one identity after another, one set of friends after another. She has two boyfriends in the film.  The first, whom she likes, turns out to be gay.  A touching scene comes when he apologizes to her for being gay and then breaks down. She comforts him, promising that she will keep his secret.  Her second boyfriend is a self-absorbed pseudo-intellectual who pretends to care about nothing.  She has her first sexual experience with him, and it’s a disappointment, both because it is extremely short, and because he confesses that he’s had sex with 6 or 7 girls—she thought she was his first.  They planned to attend prom together, but at the last minute he says that he doesn’t want to go and she leaves him, going instead to find her best friend, a miserable and awkward overweight girl, and takes her to prom.  This isn’t necessarily a moment when she realizes that she prefers people of her own gender.  Rather it’s a moment when she discovers that true friendship matters more than false and casual connections.

The end of the film, as Lady Bird leaves for Columbia University, is painfully sad.  Throughout one has suspected that her mother loves Lady Bird dearly, that she is afraid of losing her, of letting her out into the world with all its dangers and pain.  She never breaks out of her shell to express her feelings (she tries unsuccessfully to write a letter to her daughter to explain things. Lady Bird’s father gives her the different drafts of the letters). There is no conciliation between mother and daughter.  The mother remains in the car while the father walks Lady Bird inside the airport to say goodbye.  In New York, Caroline again tries on a new identity at a college party.  She gets drunk and passes out and ends up in the hospital.  Then she attends mass and makes a phone call home.  This moment is everything the film has moved towards.

Saiorise Ronan is a wonderful actor.  Laurie Metcalf as her mother is excellent in her difficult role. Everyone in the film is effective in their roles.  One could call this film heartwarming, and it is, but that hardly does justice to this film about a young woman struggling to find herself and her way.