Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut opens on a mother and daughter asleep in a hotel bed, and spends the next 94 minutes refusing to let either of them off the hook.
Lady Bird is a coming-of-age comedy drama set in Sacramento, California in the early 2000s. Saoirse Ronan plays Christine McPherson, a senior at a Catholic high school who insists on being called Lady Bird. Laurie Metcalf plays her mother, Marion. The film premiered at the 44th Telluride Film Festival on September 1, 2017, and A24 released it in the United States on November 3, 2017. It grossed $79 million and became the distributor’s highest-grossing film at the time.
Gerwig wrote the script as well as directing it. That combination is the whole engine of the thing. The screenplay never explains its heroine to the audience, and the direction never apologizes for her.
Trailer, via A24.
A Car Door in Sacramento
The film announces its terms early. In the fall of 2002, during a car ride, Marion tells Lady Bird that she is ungrateful and that her dreams are unrealistic. Lady Bird opens the door of the moving car and jumps out, breaking her arm.
That is the relationship in one gesture. Marion is not a villain and Lady Bird is not a victim. Both are stubborn, both are proud, and neither has the words to say the softer thing underneath.
The family has financial struggles. Lady Bird wants a prestigious college on the East Coast, in what she calls a city with culture. Marion wants her to be realistic. The gap between those two positions is the plot, and Gerwig never resolves it with a speech.
Danny, Kyle, and the Theater Program
Lady Bird and her best friend Julie, played by Beanie Feldstein, join the school theater program. Lady Bird resents Julie’s comparative talent. Through the program she meets Danny, played by Lucas Hedges, and starts dating him.
She spends her last Thanksgiving before graduation with Danny’s wealthy family, which disappoints Marion. Then she catches Danny kissing a boy and breaks up with him.
Danny comes back later to apologize and tearfully tells her he fears coming out. It is one of the film’s best scenes, and it belongs to Hedges. Lady Bird reconciles with him and then leaves the theater program anyway, spending less time with Julie.
Timothée Chalamet plays Kyle, the second boyfriend. He is affectless, pretentious, and funny in a way that curdles. Lady Bird kisses him at a party, and the two tell each other they are both virgins.
They have sex for the first time. Afterward Kyle reveals he was not a virgin, and tries to convince her he never said he was. The scene is short and it lands hard.
Working at the Coffee Shop
At Marion’s urging, Lady Bird takes a job at a coffee shop to earn money. She also tries to get closer to the popular students, Jenna and Kyle, by exaggerating how wealthy her family is.
The worst thing she does in the film is vandalize a nun’s car with Jenna. Gerwig lets her do it without a musical cue telling the audience how to feel.
Lady Bird is suspended from school after heckling a guest speaker at an anti-abortion assembly. Jenna tries to visit her and finds out that Lady Bird lied about Danny’s grandmother’s house being her own. The friendship ends there.
The supporting cast earns its screen time:
- Lois Smith as Sister Sarah Joan, the nun who reads Lady Bird’s writing and asks whether she actually loves Sacramento
- Stephen McKinley Henderson as Father Leviatch, the theater director
- Tracy Letts as Larry McPherson, the depressed, gentle father
- Jordan Rodrigues as Miguel McPherson, her brother
- Odeya Rush as Jenna and Marielle Scott as Shelly Yuhan
The Casting That Made It Work
Gerwig met Ronan at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2015, where the two were promoting Maggie’s Plan and Brooklyn. They read through the script in a hotel room, with Ronan reading Lady Bird and Gerwig reading everyone else. By the second page Gerwig knew Ronan was right for the part. Ronan was cast in January 2016.
Gerwig offered Lucas Hedges his choice of the male roles, and he picked Danny. Gerwig cast Metcalf after watching her theater work. The rest of the cast was announced in September 2016. Filming ran from August to October 2016 in California and New York.
The order of those decisions matters more than it looks:
- Ronan as Lady Bird, cast first and carrying the film
- Metcalf as Marion, cast from the stage rather than from screen work
- Hedges as Danny, chosen by the actor himself from the available parts
- Chalamet as Kyle, the last of the three young men to register
The Awards and the Record
The film received widespread critical acclaim, with praise aimed at Gerwig’s screenplay and direction and at the performances of Ronan and Metcalf. The National Board of Review, the American Film Institute, and Time magazine each named it one of the top ten films of 2017.
At the 90th Academy Awards it earned five nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress for Ronan, Best Supporting Actress for Metcalf, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director. At the 75th Golden Globe Awards it won two — Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) and Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for Ronan.
It is widely regarded as one of the best films of 2017, of the 2010s, and of the 21st century so far.
What Holds Up
The tagline is “Fly away home,” and the film means both halves of that. Lady Bird spends the whole runtime trying to leave Sacramento, and the last thing she learns is what she is leaving.
Gerwig’s restraint is the achievement. There is no villain, no reconciliation scene with a swelling score, no moment where Marion explains herself. The mother and daughter love each other and cannot say it, and the film trusts the audience to sit in that.
Ronan is the reason it works. She plays Lady Bird as vain, sharp, dishonest, and entirely sympathetic, sometimes in the same shot. Metcalf does the harder job, playing a woman whose love comes out as criticism because that is the only shape it takes in her mouth.
The weakest stretch is the middle, where the Jenna and Kyle material runs a little long. The film knows Lady Bird is behaving badly and does not need three scenes to prove it. Chalamet’s Kyle is a good joke that gets told twice.
What makes Lady Bird worth returning to is that it refuses the easy version of a teenage girl’s story. It does not punish her for wanting more, and it does not pretend her mother is wrong either. Both things are true at once, and the film stays there.
An Academy Award nomination for Best Director is not a small thing, and Gerwig’s five nominations for a solo debut are the clearest signal the industry sends about a first feature. The awards record is not why the film lasts. The car door is why the film lasts.
Score: 9.3 of 10.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
