Movie Review—Lady Bird

Theatrical release poster

by Peter J. O’Connell

Ladybird. Released: Dec. 2017. Runtime: 94 mins. MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual content, brief graphic nudity, and teen partying.

Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) decides to start calling herself “Lady Bird.” Presumably, it’s because she remembers the “fly away” phrase from the nursery rhyme. Christine definitely wants to fly away. She is a 17-year-old student at Immaculate Heart, a Catholic girls’ school in Sacramento, in 2002, who desperately wants to go to college in New York City, “where the culture is” (or “at least Connecticut”).  

However, Christine’s mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf), wants her daughter to go to college nearby so as to save money. Christine’s efforts to “take flight” over the course of her senior year in high school, and the consequent clashes with her mother, are depicted in Lady Bird, a piquant/poignant coming-of-age “dramedy,” meticulously written and directed by Greta Gerwig.

Lady Bird’s efforts at flight begin inauspiciously and go on from there. Taken on a tour of California colleges by her mother, the girl’s persistent interest in going to New York leads to an argument with Marion while the two are in a car. Impulsively, Lady Bird throws herself from the car, injuring her wing . . . arm.

Lady Bird’s family lives on the “wrong side of the tracks.” In the Sacramento context, that means a modest house—“one bathroom for five people”—in a pleasant neighborhood. The three other people besides Laurie and Lady Bird are Lady Bird’s father (Tracy Letts), her adopted brother (Jordan Rodrigues), and Jordan’s girlfriend (Marielle Scott). Lady Bird’s father suffers from depression and his hold on a job is shaky. Marion, who works two shifts, is the one really holding the family together. And she’s starting to feel the strain.

As Lady Bird’s senior year unfolds, her “wing” (arm) gradually heals, and she undergoes various ups and downs in her efforts to fly away from Sacramento and her strong but strained mother. Lady Bird says that she knows that Marion “loves her,” but she wonders if her mother actually “likes her.” Marion tells Lady Bird that she always has encouraged her daughter to be the best version of Christine that Christine can be. Lady Bird worries that “what is” is already the best that she ever could be.

“What is” is a pale, lanky, gangly, stringy-haired, long-faced, skinny-legged adolescent in a dorky uniform—who occasionally shows flashes of idiosyncratic beauty. “What is” is an underachieving young woman of great potential. Saoirse Ronan’s performance as Lady Bird is so good that one might say that it is the best that could conceivably have been done in this role. That might also almost be said of Laurie Metcalf in the role of Marion.

Though Lady Bird refers to her school as “Immaculate Fart” rather than Immaculate Heart, she doesn’t really dislike it. Unlike many Hollywood depictions in recent years of religious people and institutions as rigid and repressive, Gerwig—a director with a marvelously balanced approach to characters and situations—presents this parochial school as staffed by caring and competent, though sometimes slightly goofy, folks. Lois Smith as Sister Sarah Joan, the assistant principal, is a particularly endearing figure. After Lady Bird and a friend pull a prank on her by putting a sign “Just Married to Jesus” on her car, Sister gently chides Lady Bird by saying, “Actually, married for 40 years.” Lady Bird replies, “He was a lucky guy.”

As her senior year goes on, Lady Bird has an in-and-out relationship with a school play, an off-again/on-again (and vice versa) relationship with two different kinds of girl friends (Odeya Rush, Beanie Feldstein—topnotch), an on-again/off-again (and vice versa) relationship with two different kinds of boyfriends (Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet), encounters with drugs and drink—all presented as simultaneously serious (but not somber) and amusing (but not farcical). Drily witty dialogue ripples throughout the film without calling undue attention to itself.

Eventually, of course, Lady Bird has to come to terms with both her college situation and her relationship with her mother. Does she come to realize that in the nursery rhyme, the “ladybird” is not a child but a mother who flies to see if her children are safe when their house is burning? Take a flight yourself to a theatre to see this wonderful film and find out!