Sacramento, 2 0 0 2. Christine, who gave herself the nickname "Ladybird", is a teenage outsider preparing for her last day at a Catholic high school. She often clashes with her overcontrolling mother, Marion, while Christine's dad is in depression since he lost his job, complicating her plans to attend an expensive college in New York. Christine's best friend is the chubby Julie. Even though she falls in love with Danny, Christine is angry to find out he is actually gay. Nonetheless, she loses her virginity with another guy, Kyle. She also prepares to star in a school play. Due to an argument, Marion refuses to say farewell to Christine before the latter departs for New York, which she regrets. In New York, Christine is lost, but enters a church and then phones her parents to express her gratitude.
A nostalgic and gently cynical 'coming-of-age' tale, this unassuming little bitter-sweet comedy film is a semi-biographical essay without a clear storyline, instead relaying more on a 'slice-of-life' style that just follows the protagonist through life as she learns something along the way. Writer and director Greta Gerwig emulates several events from her teenage life in "Lady Bird", which thus feel genuine, whereas she has a lot of support from the leading performance, the excellent Saoirse Ronan, who already advanced into a classic actress by that time. One of the best jokes is Christine's and Jenna's prank in which they "decorate" the automobile of the nuns with a "Just married to Jesus" sign; when Christine screams on the street after experiencing her first kiss; when Christine is acting all "tough" at the store where her brother Miguel works at ("In here, I'm not your sister, I'm a customer!") or when she has a comical line after being intimate with her boyfriend for the first time ("How we are not virgins anymore. We deflowered each other."). Some omissions bother, though: the story structure feels strangely rushed, hectic and chaotic at times (especially the preparations for the stage play, which barely last several seconds of vignettes); some side characters are neglected (brother Miguel; Danny, whose gay side is suddenly mentioned but never brought up later); the ending is a little inarticulate (Christine lost in New York could have been a great little subplot on its own right) whereas some scenes of Christine arguing with her mother sometimes feel too melodramatic. It is a wonderful, very good film, refreshing in its humanity and emotions in an era of movies of special effects and sequels, yet it still missed some deeper inspiration to be considered a true classic of teenage comedy tales among the ranks of "Daria", "Heaven Help Us" or "Juno". One sequence illustrates this: in preparation for a play, the priest gives this challenge to the students: "Who ever cries first, wins". He himself then starts sapping first. And then it just cuts to another scene? A very abrupt shift. A true master, though, would have elaborated this interesting sequence even more, to not let it just randomly disappear like that.
Grade:+++
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