![]() ![]() Lady Bird’s poses, priorities and passions are mercurial and Ronan and Gerwig get this across in big, broad strokes. Ronan, at 23 reaching the end of her teen movie window, is never less than brilliant as a girl in mid-evolution. And playwright/actor Tracy Letts (“The Lovers,” TV’s “Divorce”) tries his hand at warm and cute as “the good cop” dad, the one there to comfort and spoil his daughter and encourage the dreams her mom is hellbent on crushing. Metcalf, so much more than “Rosanne’s” sister, makes the mother a study in furious resignation, an unfiltered, foul-mouthed nurse who alternately indulges and insults, coddles and cudgels her youngest child. The beating heart of the picture pulses through the parents. The plump best friend ( Beanie Feldstein) who shares Lady Bird’s academic underachievement, the rich girl ( Odeya Rush) she wants to impress, the brooding “deep” musician ( Timothee Chalamet) she is drawn to all are given a Gerwig twist.Ī JV football coach/priest called in to direct a play, in a pinch, feels like a rejected idea from a John Hughes comedy of the ’80s. Gerwig casts a rich, lived-in tapestry for Lady Bird to inhabit, and that makes the high school movie cliches play fresh. If this dizzy, naive teen from the provinces can charm this rich, handsome leading man, who knows where she can go in the world? She may be, as she declares, “from the wrong side of the tracks,” but to Danny, she’s a kindred spirit, and Hedges registers unalloyed delight in her presence. But that’s where she meets her first love.ĭanny, given an awkward, amusing luminescence by Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea”) clicks with Lady Bird. When she finally dips her toe in the joint girls school/boys school fall musical of her senior year (Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along”) Lady Bird isn’t an instant star (though Ronan allows her a flamboyant charisma and stage presence). It’s just that a girl who has renamed herself “Lady Bird,” who hopelessly runs for class president every year, who’s clueless that her innate theatricality means she might want to consider school plays instead of hopeless dreams of mathletic glory, isn’t about realism. Her teachers, some of them nuns ( Lois Smith) are gentler, but just as realistic. ![]() Her guidance counselor laughs in her face. Grades be damned, she wants to go to an school in the East, to New York. “You can’t even pass your driver’s test…You aren’t even worth state (college) tuition.”īut in 2002, in the shadow of 9/11, a Sacramento girl can dream. The wonderful Saoirse Ronan channels her writer-director in Gerwig’s self-written, semi-autobiographical comedy “Lady Bird.” And as amusing as it was to hear the affected, pretentiously daffy Gerwig locutions playing perky, upbeat and willfully dizzy Gerwig characters in Woody Allen’s fantasy of New York, the writer-director has parked this rough draft of herself in a warm, witty and wise comedy about growing up in Sacramento, and yearning far-too-openly for something else.Ĭhristine (Ronan) goes to a Catholic School with, her furiously critical mother never forgets to remind her, “rich kids.” Mom, given an acrid desperation by Laurie Metcalf, is equally blunt in telling Christine, “We’re NOT rich,” that her daughter’s college aspirations don’t match her talents. ![]() But with “Lady Bird,” she’s found a way to pass the torch. ![]() For more information on membership and to join online, visit our membership page.Greta Gerwig has matured out of playing the adorable, quirky, self-absorbed with self-invention young women of “Hannah Takes the Stairs” and “Damsels in Distress.” In film after film, she’s let us see the social y striving - posh, put-on accents, affected to-the-manner-born posing, feigned enthusiasm and self-promotion in every character (“Frances Ha,” “Mistress America”). Ticket purchase includes same-day admission to the Museum (see gallery hours). (Members may contact with questions regarding online reservations.) Tickets: $15 (Free for members at the Film Lover level and MoMI Kids Premium levels and above). Set in Sacramento, California in 2002, amidst a rapidly shifting American economic landscape, Lady Bird is a sharply funny and uniquely moving look at the relationships that shape us, the beliefs that define us, and the life-defining complications of home. Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Ronan) is a strong-willed, opinionated, and wildly passionate seventeen-year-old in constant combat with her strong-willed, opinionated, and wildly passionate mom (Metcalf), a nurse working tirelessly to keep her family afloat after Lady Bird’s father (Letts) loses his job. In her critically acclaimed, semi-autobiographical directorial debut, Greta Gerwig excavates both the humor and pathos in the turbulent bond between a mother and her teenage daughter. With Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, Odeya Rush, Tracey Letts, Laurie Metcalf, Kathryn Newton, Lucas Hedges. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |