Randomly Reviewed "Lady Bird"
Lady Bird is a coming-of-age story. Christine's last year before college covers her growing awareness and shaping identity, while she develops talent and potential.
It's not hard to say that the development arc
of the Lady Bird is by the book.
A loving family that struggles with job crisis and lack of money, right before the youngest daughter has to enter college. First love, confused with a balanced relationship; faking a social level just to be accepted by the "mean girl" of the school. A passionate crush on a magnetic guy, that is an outsider at the same school. A freezing awakening from a dream becoming a nasty nightmare. Detachment from parents to pursue the ultimate cultural dream. Final acceptation of being a grown-up, calling herself by her real name.
You won't find anything new in this movie on becoming an adult. You have plenty of titles more interesting than this movie, such as "Stand by me", "Juno", "The perks of being a wallflower", "An Education", "Pretty in pink", just to name a few.
What you can find here is the romantic
and nostalgic sense of what is being a teenager at that age.
I remember being so focused about discovering what being appreciated and loved was, that I couldn't be aware of the situation itself while living it. This was like being constantly apart from my body, and reimagine everything that happened at that time.
But in Lady Bird we go a little bit further.
Director and Writer, Greta Gerwig, has tailored a story about the constant projecting of an early 20s love, feelings and expectations. Think about the young and dark Kyle, interpreted by talented Timothée Chalamet; he's so unique and different from all the others, he can either be too much contrived pretending to be someone he's not, or he can actually be genuine, but not aligned to the refined taste of a teenager.
It's more like "What would impress the woman I am now, if I were still sixteen?" (BTW, reading "People History of the United States" marks a pretty clear point on it).
But still there's a lot of real disillusion in this film. About love, about becoming a grown-up, about leaving parents, about being on a fight with friends. This is the power of this film: a feminine, non-judgmental take on disappointment and how insignificant it is the moment it passes.
Lady Bird struggle so much about her life,
that as soon as she step into maturity, she understands the correlation of events
and becomes grateful for everything she has.
