REVIEW: Lady Bird

Directed by Greta Gerwig
2017 Comedy Drama
1 hour 34 minutes
From A24

Starring
Saoirse Ronan
Laurie Metcalf
Tracy Letts
Timothée Chalamet
Lucas Hedges
Beanie Feldstein
Lois Smith

No, this isn't about our former first lady, LBJ's wife, but I wish it had been.  It might have captured my attention far more than it did.

Written and directed by actress Greta Gerwig, it is obviously  autobiographical and concerns itself with the everyday problems of a 2002 senior high school girl unhappily living in Sacramento, California.  She hates the place, doesn't get along with her exacting mother or brother, stresses herself out over where to go to college and deals with both religious issues and her burgeoning sexuality.

I love coming of age stories and perhaps this would have resonated with me more if I had ever been a teenage girl.  But I never was and it didn't.  I found most all a humdrum sameness that I have seen a hundred times before.  It was also not particularly well-developed and as such had nowhere to go. 

When a writer is handling her own autobiographical story and then becomes the director as well, it doesn't bode well for securing much objectivity.  And that is certainly so for a person who has only directed one other film and then nine years earlier.  It turns out feeling more like a very personal diary entry than a movie that goes plans to go somewhere.  Someone else needs to be there to say I don't get it or where is this going?  A new director simply can't be objective about her own writing based on her own life.

It has an abrupt and unsatisfying ending because of the same complaint.  She just doesn't know how to end it, tie it up or wrap it up.  She chose to give no answers or solutions... just darken the screen and start the credits.  Perhaps there's the hope that someone will find it profound.  How clever to end it like that and hope that the audience will come up with its own solution.  How avant garde.  Well, it wasn't.  It never built beyond anything that made me much care and in fact I had to fight off a nap.  

What it does have going for it is good acting all around.  Ronan is a most thoughtful performer, not at all actressy... her sincerity is always what draws one to her.  She is, however, better showcased in Brooklyn (2015)... if you haven't seen it, I recommend.  

It was great to see Metcalf, always rather gripping in her dramatic roles although more famous for the comically playing the TV sister of Roseanne.  She plays a mother who just can't let go of it.  What is it?  Oh just about anything that can be used to needle her daughter.  It's clear that they love one another but simply cannot get along.  It reminded me of the issues a lot of us have had with same-sex parents.  The film is at its best when focused on these two.

I have never seen Chalamet in anything but he seems like he's poised for stardom with those movie star looks.  He is actually one of the main reasons I wanted to see this movie although I am hotly anticipating his participation in two upcoming and talked-about films, the violent Christian Bale western Hostiles and the gay romance Call Me By Your Name, as Armie Hammer's boyfriend.  Stay tuned on those reviews.

Equally young Lucas Hedges I have seen before, including in the last film I reviewed.  He first came to my attention via his emotional performance in Manchester by the Sea.  His character here, enjoying a blush of teen infatuation with Ronan, has a surprise in store for everyone.  And frankly, weaving a story around the two of them is what should have been pursued.  

Just to bring some balance, I have heard some very positive things about the film.  Just not opinions I share.



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