Greta Gerwig’s ‘Lady Bird’ Is One Of Film’s Best Coming-Of-Age Stories
Too many films about teenagers coast on precocious ideals. Here, Saoirse Ronan and her colleagues rise above the genre’s simplifications.
A
nurse (Laurie Metcalf) and her 17-year-old daughter (Saoirse Ronan)
cruise down a highway. They’re listening to an audiobook reciting the
closing passage from “The Grapes of Wrath,” tears trickling from their
eyes in unison. It’s like “Sleepless in Seattle,” when Meg Ryan and
Rosie O’Donnell sob as they watch “An Affair to Remember,” except here
the sentiment is short-lived.
As
quickly as the Steinbeck novel ends, attention shifts to the girl’s
desire to flee California for an East Coast college. The mood drops. An
argument ― clearly one they’ve had before ― breaks out. “The way that
you work, you’re not even worth state tuition,” the mother barks. Her
daughter yanks the car door open and threatens to hurl herself out of
it. The spell is severed. The waterworks have dried. They resume their
natural roles: testy teenager and pinched parent.
This exchange is the perfect introduction to “Lady Bird,” the solo directorial debut from Greta Gerwig, high priestess of staccato speech and translucent
soul-searching relative to both Millennials and Gen Xers. (Gerwig’s
first directing project was the 2008 mumblecore drama “Nights and
Weekends,” made with Joe Swanberg.) Across a dulcet 93 minutes, “Lady
Bird” ― a movie you’ll wish existed when you were a teen ― captures the
ever-ebbing and ever-flowing current that is maturity. An adolescent
thinks she’s mastered it all; an adult realizes maybe she still
hasn’t. Residing under the same middle-class roof, where one worries
about schoolyard popularity and the other frets over hefty grocery
bills, they foster a familiar acrimony that’s as fleeting as it is
forceful. They just can’t resist giving each other a hard time.
Indeed,
watching “Lady Bird” substitutes as an overdue therapy session. Whether
you identify with the mother (named Marion), the daughter (Christine,
who asks to be called Lady Bird) or both, the same notion reveals
itself: You don’t get everything right, no matter how hard you try ― in
fact, maybe you don’t even try that hard at all.
Gerwig,
who set the movie in 2003, one year after her own high school
graduation, when Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me” hit its nostalgic
peak, has a flair for the way little moments bleed into major episodes.
Everything in these characters’ orbits lands with high impact, for
better and worse. Blissfully, Gerwig’s script, originally titled
“Mothers and Daughters,” is funny and perceptive enough to avoid the
coming-of-age genre’s clichés.
There
are two things I love most about “Lady Bird.” First is the cast. Ronan
and Metcalf capture an affectionate rancor without the twee inflections
that make far too many films about teenagers seem precocious or
idealistic. Marion and Lady Bird are hard to live with, both operating
in states of infinite disenchantment. The latter wants to be a rebel ―
“I think we’re done with the learning part of high school,” she
announces ― but can’t quite nail how, or why; Mom doesn’t understand how
Lady Bird became such an ungrateful snob.
And
the folks who drift through their lives during those final months
before college are like well-sought signatures in a yearbook worth
keeping. Playing Lady Bird’s love interests, two of our most promising
young actors show up: “Manchester by the Sea” breakout Lucas Hedges as
the tender star in the school’s production of “Merrily We Roll Along,”
and “Call Me by Your Name” beacon Timothée Chalamet as a too-cool
guitarist embodying every pretentious-male-brat tic. Beanie Feldstein
portrays Lady Bird’s amiable but self-conscious BFF, landing a line
worth a pond of tears: “Some people aren’t born happy, you know?” And,
solid as ever, Tracy Letts is on hand as Lady Bird’s out-of-work father,
Stephen McKinley Henderson as her patient drama teacher and Lois Smith
as the benevolent nun employed as her Catholic campus’ principal.
The
second hallmark of the film that got me will probably spark fewer
conversations than the mother-daughter dynamics and pre-collegiate
unease. “Lady Bird” has a keen eye for class dynamics, particularly as
they relate to the adolescent experience, when everyone litigates the
quality of others’ material possessions. Lady Bird, who lives in a
modest home on what she calls “the wrong side of the tracks,” envies the
mansions that belong to her wealthier classmates ― so much so that she
sometimes fibs about her address. As hard as Lady Bird’s parents try,
their income can’t stack up against Sacramento’s moneyed tract. Like
many blue-collar kids who aren’t categorically poor, she is still too
young to appreciate that struggle in full. Such helplessness piles onto
the festering identity issues that accompany puberty and spill into
adulthood. Sometimes, to cheer themselves up, Marion and Lady Bird tour
palatial open houses, pretending they can afford the prices. It’s their
“favorite Sunday activity.”
Gerwig
shows excellent command as a director. She’s crafted a film not about
the messy melodrama of youth but about the measurable melancholy of an
age when we are blind to our own limitations. It’s a perfect storm of
innocence lost, from hoarding Communion wafers at school and debating
the quality of clove cigarettes to virginal trysts and incessant
criticism from peers and parents alike.
I
will say this, however: I’m curious to see if Gerwig can someday depart
from the semi-autobiographical mode that echoes her early
collaborations with Noah Baumbach, namely the career-defining “Frances
Ha.” As a whole, “Lady Bird” can feel somewhat incomplete. However
lovely it may be scene to scene, there’s a rambling quality, as if
Gerwig condensed a longer script into a greatest-hits medley.
Thankfully, that doesn’t make the movie less affecting, especially for
those familiar with Gerwig’s sensibilities. Ronan, fantastic as ever, is
very much her avatar, and it’s hard not to buy into the bittersweet
regret that exists between Lady Bird and her mother, whose sour postures
about life’s circumstances drive an unnecessary wedge between them.
The
final chapter, set in New York, acts as an epilogue ― a bridge, even,
between Lady Bird’s past and future, when she is suddenly on her own and
finally able to start processing the rearview mirror of her budding
history. Independence changes her perspective. Everything she thought
she knew about her family now seems ephemeral. Why’d she have to be so
irascible in the first place? It’s there that “Lady Bird” gets its
wings: soaring with the hopefulness of a thousand unwritten
possibilities.
“Lady Bird” opens in select theaters on Nov. 3. It expands to additional cities throughout the month.
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