Lady Bird is fantastic coming of age film and we’d claim it’s a modern classic. We only just got round to watching it this week (shame on us), but nine years after its 2017 it’s still a life-affirming time of it.
Set in 2002, it explores the life of young high school student Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) as she bumbles her way through a difficult relationship with her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf). It’s all very inspired and was Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut.
Lady Bird’s Uplifting Take on the Trials of Teenage Years
For us, the three best breakthrough female actors of this generation are Mia Goth, Sandra Hüller, and Saoirse Ronan. Nine years back, the latter rose to prominence with a series of brilliant films (2015’s excellent Brooklyn being a fine example).
But it was Lady Bird that really cemented Ronan’s reputation. In this, she played the rebellious Christine—a senior at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California.
This rebellious phase has led her to choose the moniker Lady Bird, which she insists everyone call her. She wants to leave Sacramento and have a Bohemian style, cultural life studying at university in New York. The problem there is her family situation is financially challenging, plus her mother Marion has an on-and-off oppressive/accommodating relationship with her.
Her father Larry (Tracy Letts) is much more open and laid-back, but he’s also struggling with depression and at odds with Marion’s approach to parenting.
Meanwhile, a series of eager guys are hurling themselves at Lady Bird and she goes through various trials and tribulations with them. All while she engages with her close friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein) in typical teenage fashion.
That’s the set up for the film, which goes on to explore themes of family struggles, financial struggles, friendship, and self-discovery in a specific time and place (2002). That resonates with us a great deal, as we were the same age as a main character at the time and Greta Gerwig’s excellent writing really flags up the feel of the time.
Lady Bird has a brief spell of trying to be one of the cool kids, jeopardising her close friendship with Julie, and all while she participates in a high school production.
A great triumph of the film is its judgement-free sense of humanity. It’s funny and observant, depicting this Catholic high school as a decent place to be. There’s no left-wing leaning putdown of right-wing ideology, nor is Lady Bird (the character) unhappy about the situation.
As she is a progressive and a culturally minded person, but she genuinely values (most of the time, anyway) the life advice from various nuns at the school. She just wants to also leave the environment and discover something else in New York.
Wrapped around all that are her brief flings with two guys. The first is Daniel (Lucas Hedges), the second is the weasel of a character Kyle (Timothée Chalamet) who turns out to be a total dipshit. But he’s pretty enough to draw Lady Bird in.
We love how the film captures that teenage looming sense of adulthood and greater emotional maturity, set alongside the goofy lust for being daft, young, and stupid. This makes for some very funny scenes across the film, such as where Lady Bird and Julie make up after a tiff. Then celebrate by eating all the cheese in Julie’s family home.
It’s the stupid crap you do when you’re 17 or so that seems hilarious, not knowing 20 years later there’ll be a fridge full of cheese and it’d seem like a crime to society if you ate all of it in one frenzy.
Everything is told with a keen sense of realism, too, with Gerwig’s directing often randomly cutting in and out of scenes. Some scenes begin mid-conversation as a slice of life, viewers simply go along with it as you’re invested in the characters.
And towards the conclusion of the film, Lady Bird gets her uni of choice in New York and heads out there.
Then, early on, she gets drunk, winds up in hospital, and stumbles back home in a hapless daze (that reminds us of a drunken moment we had in 2002 where we came to a bit startled about what had happened).
Again, that’s where the film won our hearts. Capturing that moment when you’re now supposed to be an adult, where you’re supposed to be a fully realised person, but you’ve actually got no real idea what you’re doing.
All of it powered along by the brilliant Saoirse Ronan, one of the great acting talents of this generation, to cap off a perfect 10/10 production from us.
The Production of Lady Bird
Off its $10 million budget Lady Bird was a solid enough hit, making back $79 million at the global box office. It was a critical darling and recognised as one of the best films of 2017, getting five nominations at the Oscars (winning two).
The film was shot in Sacramento, California, the setting for the story.
Everything was shot across August of 2016, with other locations including LA and New York. Everything wrapped by October 2016. Greta Gerwig chose Saoirse Ronan upfront for the role after they read through the script together, with Ronan dying her hair (in classic teenage rebellion fashion) red for the role. Gerwig wrote the script, but noted it wasn’t overly autobiographical as she wasn’t a rebellious teenager.
But she is from Sacramento, which is why the film is set there. Looks like a cool place!
As for Ronan, she’s Irish and had to speak with an American accent across the film. Interestingly, she said the most difficult word to pronounce was “perfect”.
Greta Gerwig’s directing style included arriving an hour earlier to set than everyone else, plus banning the use of mobile phones on set.
It does play out like an indie film, really, the way it’s put together. But this was a big production with a big budget, so we’re glad it received the recognition it did almost a decade ago.
