The Reel Review
Saoirse Ronan is Lady Bird, a precocious, opinionated teenager in this coming of age film set in 2003 Sacramento. Despite the family’s financial struggles and pushback from her pessimistic mother (Laurie Metcalf), Lady Bird secretly enlists her newly-jobless, depressed father (Tracy Letts) to help her pursue her dream of getting admitted to college in New York. Actress Greta Gerwig, in her directorial debut, presents a clever, semi-autobiographical story about the bittersweet transition from adolescence to adulthood that is funny, sad and refreshingly realistic. The film’s many heartfelt moments will resonate with anyone whom has maintained hope in the face of recurring disappointment, and both Ronan and Metcalf are sublime in their portrait of a complex, but loving, mother-daughter relationship. Well done.
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