DBC’s review published on Letterboxd:
Senior year of High School--at the time it can feel both so meaningless and consequential, and usually more so the latter in retrospect. You're trying to figure out your future but still having to go through the same old grind of the present what with the school and the parents and the stupid town you're stuck in, and yet while you're maybe not-so-discreetly rolling your eyes over all that tired shit and going through the required motions of either fighting or going along with the program (and as a teenager you're expected to do both) you're still going through these massive identity-defining experiences whether you're aware of it or feeling it or not.
Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird takes us through one such Senior year peppered with plenty of meaningful moments, some seeming more likely to be remembered than others, but all painting a distinct portrait of a young woman coming into her adult identity in late 2002 and 2003. Christine "Lady Bird" is -- bratty, sweet, awkward, independent, naive, knowing, sneaky, truthful, self-absorbed, thoughtful, cruel, loving, so many things a person growing out of childhood can be, and it flows out of Saoirse Ronan in a way that feels both natural and yet from a place of depth as an actor.
So much of the weight of this movie is on Ronan and it wouldn't work if she wasn't as in her zone as she clearly was, but it also wouldn't have worked so swimmingly if she wasn't so well supported. The large supporting cast is full of unique performances that create excellent, fully-developed and very real people that populate this distinctly post-9/11 Sacramento. It's a heightened version of that time and these types of people, but isn't that how memory works, holding on to the stand-out characteristics of the past to create our permanent memory of that former time in our lives?
Director Greta Gerwig expertly takes us through Lady Bird's big year, using subtle and not-so-subtle references to mark the passage of time in the story. There's parts of the tale that feel familiar, not just because they're mostly universal to teens but because we've seen it done in so many other coming-of-age movies. And yet there's something very fresh and true about Lady Bird, and maybe as cinema continues to mature as an art form, we're able to dig deeper into the newest iteration of an old story. Because there's definitely something in this film that hits deep and real. Maybe it has to do with the unresolved feelings so many people have towards their parents from the years when they were growing up, especially the young adult period. Very few of us think we did our teen years perfectly. Very few parents--in their heart of hearts--think they did their kid's teen years perfectly either. But maybe movies like this make it easier for all of us, regardless of age, to deal with something we can't go back in time and change. I'm glad movies like this exist.