Catching up on the director/writer’s back catalogue after seeing Barbie just before Christmas, I managed, on the one hand to wonder how I missed it at the time, but also to feel joy that I can have that experience now.
Christine McPherson is in her final year at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California. Her family is struggling financially and her relationship with her mother is particularly strained – she refuses to call herself by her given name, but calls herself instead, ‘Lady Bird’ – but she harbours dreams of getting a place at a prestigious East Coast college, where there’s some ‘culture’.
That might sound like a wide open door for tropes and cliches, but Gerwig takes it and makes it into something so much more complex and emotionally satisfying.
It benefits from an excellent supporting cast – not least Timothée Chalomet, Bernie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith and Lucas Hedges.
But Saoirse Ronan as the titular character and Laurie Metcalf as her mother, Marion, take it to a new level.
A late scene has the camera hold on Metcalf’s face for an age, as her character comes to an emotional realisation – it is a wonderful scene from actor and director alike and just one example amid many.
Absolutely no wonder that it has garnered so many awards and such praise.
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