Lady Bird

November 28, 2020 - Saoirse Ronan fights with her mother and tries on new friends and a new name in this award-winning film from writer/director Greta Gerwig. The supporting cast includes Laurie Metcalf, Timothée Chalamet, and Beanie Feldstein.

Ronan plays a high school senior who dreams of leaving home in Sacramento and going to college in New York City to become a writer. Her given name is Christine, but she's let it be known that she'll be called Lady Bird or nothing at all. Metcalf is her mother, who works as a nurse on the psych ward. The family doesn't have a lot of money, and she feels that Lady Bird should set her sights on a college closer to home. Lady Bird responds by throwing herself out of a moving car.

Back at the Catholic school she attends in Sacramento, Lady Bird and her best friend, Julie (Feldstein), try out for the school musical. Julie gets the better role, but Lady Bird gets the guy as she starts dating the male lead. When that relationship goes south, she gets involved with too cool Kyle (Chalamet). Lady Bird gets drawn into his circle of too cool friends, a circle that does not include Julie. As Lady Bird finds out, that circle also does not include her.

Overall review: *** The film won a couple Golden Globe awards. It also got nominated for several Oscars but didn't win any. It's a perfectly fine movie with good performances. Saoirse Ronan, I think, is going to be the Meryl Streep of her generation. But, as a whole, this movie was just not "big" enough for the Oscars. And, that's OK. Just like it's OK for Christine to hang out with her nerdy friends instead of trying to be someone that she's not.