Coming of Age, Heartbreak Included

In 1975 Bobbi Ann Nelson wrote “The Girl Sleuth,” an examination into the social mores presented in the works of children’s fiction published through the 1930s and 40s in which teenage heroines (e.g. famous Nancy Drew, less remembered Judy Bolton) solved neighborhood mysteries. The sides of good and evil presented in these texts were crystal clear to Nelson: there was the WASP elite, whose country club walls safeguarded culture, beauty and morality, and the evil poor, who threatened the upper-middle class with laziness and greed. “They are the hucksters and tricksters who sneer at authority.” Still, there was a third archetype within these novels: the benevolent laborers, who kept their tiny homes tidy, grateful for the small hand they’d been dealt. “Nancy is generous to truck drivers and cabbies and maids,” wrote Nelson. “But woe betide the upstarts, the dishonest social climbers who want to grab at the top.”

Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, “Lady Bird” is set in 2002 in the suburban neighborhoods of Sacramento, Calif., where a teenage girl and her mother spar, often unconsciously, with exactly what is expected of a “good” working-class family. Seventeen-year-old Christine (Saoirse Ronan, previously of “Brooklyn,” now sporting a flawless American accent, acne ridden cheeks, and a Manic Panic wash of faded maroon hair) has the benefit of attending a private Catholic school on scholarship, but in turn has absorbed the aimless ambitions of a richer girl. She dreams of an East Coast life brimming with romantic ideals, longing for “New York, or at least Connecticut where writers live.” In the meantime she slacks off in class, hoping a collegiate scholarship will come through and she can hop to another school above her parents’ two-income tax bracket. Her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf, in a career-topping role), a nurse with little softness for these larks, has thoroughly absorbed the unconscious lessons of Nancy Drew’s world. In a scene typical of their daily conflicts, Marion grows furious with her daughter over an unkept bedroom, chiding that the grungy styling we’ve grown to fondly associate with Ronan’s character as insignia of a creative, rebellious youth holds a sadder truth in context of an economically based social structure. If Christine looks like trash, people will think her family is trash. The poor are not granted the freedom of a Prince Hal dalliance. 

It is through dalliances however, painted with the perfect blend of raw empathy and a whip-smart comedic script, that Christine, brash, self-conscious, and unknowingly funny, truly grows. Renaming herself Lady Bird (no explanation is given, or needed) she is a creature of pure want, and Ronan is so skilled a performer that a twinkling gaze conveys all too well the all-encompassing, headlong euphoria of not just desire, but the formations of a plan. Her wants include the boy three notes into his “Into The Woods” audition song, another boy sulking and strumming with his garage band, the popularity of a girl with a ribbon-tied ponytail, the perfect house on the perfect street where Lady Bird longs to belong. She dreams of a more audacious, more fanciful life than that of her parents, and she might just have the ever-present nerve, and the rare flash of emotional intelligence, to get it… one day. 

But what is the literal price of a child who is finding herself? How do you love a child who refuses to understand how deeply money can be entwined with that love? Marion’s answer is a passive aggressive stance that borders on cruelty. Still, the dilemma is clear. Either she will keep her daughter caged in a sensible, local college, or Lady Bird will break away to New York and an entirely new life. And either way, someone’s heart will break.

Greta Gerwig (“20th Century Women,” “Jackie”), an effortlessly charming performer who grew up in Sacramento, has since become an emblematic figure of a young, New York City-based wave of filmmaking, starting with her on-screen debut in “Hannah Takes the Stairs,” which she co-wrote. She has since co-written and starred in “Frances Ha” and “Mistress America,” both directed by her boyfriend, Noah Baumbach, himself an icon of contemporary New York filmmaking. “Lady Bird,” however, is Gerwig’s first film behind the camera and her first film that she has written entirely on her own. It not only exceeds any of her collaborations by leaps and bounds, it is the best movie this season so far.