Content area
Full text
Lady Bird
Director: Greta Gerwig
Country/Distributor: USA, A24
Opening: November 3
Greta gerwig's lady bird takes place in her hometown of Sacramento, "the Midwest of California," in the words of the film's title character. It's a conservative, homogenous place where photos of once-Governor Ronald Reagan still hang proudly in people's homes, and where it's assumed by parents that attending a local college is preferable to traveling 3,000 miles away for school. Joan Didion, born and raised in Sacramento, wrote, "My mother made the trip from Sacramento to Los Angeles in 1932, to see the Olympics, and did not find reason to make it again for 30 years."
Gerwig со-directed and co-wrote a number of features in her "mumblecore" beginnings before her fruitful collaboration with Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha, Mistress America). Her first solo flight as a director and writer is beautifully confident in its rhythm and mood, the script whipsawing from humor to earnest emotion to raw pain and back.
Christine (Saoirse Ronan) is a nervy, restless high school senior, lost in the shuffle of a big Catholic school. She has renamed herself "Lady Bird" as a declaration of independence. It's not clear if she realizes the nickname also happens to be one...