Lady Bird (2017)
Coming-of-age stories are hardly in short supply at the cinema, but every so often one arrives that feels less like a genre exercise and more like a memory someone has chosen to share with you. Lady Bird, released in 2017, is one of those films. Set in Sacramento, California, in the early 2000s, it follows Christine McPherson, a seventeen-year-old who insists on being called Lady Bird, as she negotiates her final year of Catholic high school, her fraught home life, a couple of ill-fated romances, and the looming question of what comes next. The setting matters more than it might first appear: Sacramento is frequently dismissed as a nowhere place, and the film uses that sense of provincial restlessness to say something honest about the gap between where you are and where you imagine yourself to be.
What makes Lady Bird particularly worth paying attention to is that it marks the solo directorial debut of Greta Gerwig, who had previously co-directed Barbie... actually, let us be precise: Gerwig had spent years as an actor and collaborator in the American indie scene before stepping behind the camera alone here. The screenplay is entirely her own, drawn from autobiographical experience, and produced on a modest budget through IAC Films and Scott Rudin Productions. The film ran for a brisk 94 minutes and went on to collect five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, the latter making Gerwig only the fifth woman ever nominated in that category at the time. For a quiet, personal film with no special effects and a handful of locations, that reception tells you something. Much as She's Gotta Have It announced Spike Lee as a voice worth following, Lady Bird announced Gerwig as a filmmaker with a genuinely distinctive point of view.
The cast assembled around Gerwig's script is, across the board, excellent. Saoirse Ronan, already well regarded for her work in Brooklyn and Atonement, takes the lead role and runs with it completely. She brings a quality that is rare in performances like this: you believe Lady Bird is both infuriating and entirely sympathetic at the same moment, which is, of course, exactly what being seventeen actually is. Opposite her, Laurie Metcalf plays Marion, Lady Bird's mother, a nurse working double shifts to keep the family afloat, and her performance is precise, layered, and frequently devastating in the quietest possible way. Tracy Letts, better known as a playwright and stage actor, brings a gentle, lived-in warmth to the father, Larry. The supporting cast includes Lucas Hedges, who had just come off Manchester by the Sea, Timothée Chalamet in an early role that hints at the career to come, and Beanie Feldstein as Lady Bird's best friend. It is, in short, a polished but never showy ensemble, the kind that lets the writing do its work without getting in the way.
Greta Gerwig’s 2017 masterpiece Lady Bird is a cracking coming-of-age story about a girl who feels perpetually stuck in between. What really struck me about the film is how brilliantly it’s structured, almost as if it’s split in two. Think about it: the protagonist has two names (Christine and Lady Bird), two distinct relationships with her two parents, two boyfriends, two best friends, two school plays, two parties, and two potential colleges. It’s a beautifully paced narrative that perfectly captures that messy, transitional limbo of late adolescence, anchored by a phenomenal, star-making turn from Saoirse Ronan.
The family dynamics are where the film truly sings. Lady Bird has a deeply troubled, fiercely combative relationship with her mum, Marion (played with absolute brilliance by Laurie Metcalf). What makes it so compelling is the underlying current that her mum is herself clearly mirroring the fraught relationship she had with her own mother. In stark contrast, she shares a wonderfully warm, great relationship with her dad, Larry (Tracy Letts), who is quietly struggling with unemployment and his own personal demons. And I have to give massive credit to Beanie Feldstein, who plays a similar sweet, awkward role to her one in Booksmart, once again proving why she’s such a brilliant, rising star in cinema, bringing so much genuine heart to the screen.
But it’s the finale that truly cements the movie’s status as a modern classic. It is absolutely beautiful, delivering a sudden, poignant realisation (without spoiling the specifics) that Lady Bird is ultimately traveling the exact same roads as her mum. It’s a deeply moving payoff that recontextualises the entire film and leaves you with a massive lump in your throat.
Lady Bird is a brilliant, deeply empathetic film that captures the bittersweet reality of growing up, making mistakes, and eventually understanding the people who raised you. Absolutely brilliant.
Lady Bird sits comfortably in a tradition of personal, character-led American cinema, the sort of film that rewards patience and a willingness to sit with ambivalence rather than resolution. Gerwig has since demonstrated on a larger canvas (and a considerably larger budget) that her instincts hold at scale, but there is something irreplaceable about a debut this assured and this unguarded. If the films that tend to stay with you are the ones that feel true rather than constructed, then Lady Bird earns its place in that company. Fly away home, indeed, but it turns out home was following you the whole time.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2026-06-29
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Lady Bird (2017) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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