I’m hoping it’s just by chance that I’ve been seeing a lot of films starring Saoirse Ronan but I’m beginning to really see a lot of similar traits in the kinds of roles she plays. I love coming of age films a lot. There’s always this familiar feeling of stepping into a new phase of life and all the challenges that particular age comes with. I’ve been hearing a lot of good reports about this particular film and I thought, why not?
Lady Bird (2017)
Christine MacPherson is a senior in a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California. She calls herself Lady Bird and uses that to introduce herself to everyone. Her family is going through financial challenges but Lady Bird still longs to go to a prestigious college in the East coast which she refers to as a “place of culture.”
Lady Bird feels that her greatest antagonist is her mother, who has a strong, intense personality like hers. They constantly bicker at each other, and Lady Bird even jumps out of a moving car to prove a point to her mother when she says she is ungrateful and calls her college dreams unrealistic. According to Lady Bird, her mother may love her but does not like her.
From boyfriends who later turn out to be gay, poor math results, ditching best friends for the popular kids, underwhelming sex, college applications, suspensions, lies and everything in between, Lady Bird goes through it all. All in the quest to truly determine where here love lies and those who love her. Is it a kill or be killed situation?
My Thoughts and Rating
I’d like to start by saying I wish I knew what the name Lady Bird implied in the end of this film. What made her choose the name and most of all, what significance did the name have to her as a person, the movie as a whole, or was it just about being free? (Which I'm just implying anyway because I'm a literature student).
I resonated with this movie a lot, like I said initially, because I kind of saw myself in Lady Bird a bit. Not in the way she acted and certainly not in the decisions she made, but specifically in the relationship she had with her mother. My Mom and I are quite strong-willed and have even stronger personalities. So, at a certain point, we were almost always at loggerheads. Hence, how easy it was back then to think she hated me.
So, it was the bittersweet kind of nostalgia that filled me when it came to Lady Bird and her mother, Marion’s relationship. Of course, there are only so many things you can get away with in an African household and I certainly wasn’t as expressive in our arguments, lol. But of course, like most of us realize, we weren’t being hated at all.
Lady Bird was quite an annoying personality, though. Constantly doing one thing or the other that made me wonder what exactly was going on in her head and what exactly she was trying to prove doing the things she did. However, I remembered that she was a teenager and this was a coming of age film, so it was imperative that silly decisions would be made.
Officially putting it out there. I’m not a fan of Timothée Chalamet. I’m not a fan of his and I find all the hype around him ridiculously amusing. I’ve not seen many of his films but the few I’ve seen feature him acting in a so-called mysterious, nonchalant way that I do not find the least bit charming. Or maybe it’s just the roles I see him playing in the films I happen to see.
At the end of the day, I appreciate how realistic this film was. No, the girl doesn’t fall for some guy and then see the bad boy, and they live happily ever after. There are a lot of intricacies that make it look like you’re viewing the actual life story of someone. It's quite delightful, to say the very least. And I do not regret the movie, even though I may just as soon forget it. A 3.9/5 stars from me.
Jhymi🖤
Images from IMDB
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