Lady Bird
2017
****½
Director: Great Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith
Greta Gerwig's full directorial debut is a deeply personal coming of age story about a 17-year-old Sacramento girl who is in her last year of high school. Christine, who would like to be known as Lady Bird, dreams of going to college on the East Coast, but can she pull it off academically and financially? Gerwig's snappy script doesn't offer anything groundbreaking, but she has created utterly believable and wonderfully nuanced characters and found a terrific cast to play them. At the centre of it all are Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, and their moving portrayal of a complicated mother-daughter relationship.
