Sacramento, 2002, some shitty and nondescript Catholic school. Meet Lady Bird, a high school senior whose family is poor as hell and who really just wants to get the hell away from her hometown already. Played by the always-charming Saoirse Ronan, she does all the same shit you remember doing in high school, like fighting with your parents, falling out and making up with your friends, being embarrassed about your home life, trying to befriend the cool crowd, worrying about your sex life before it even gets started. You know, classic coming of age type stuff.
What sets this one apart is how real and genuine it feels. It's not so much a slice of life as it is a large collection of very quick slices of life, but then, isn't that what life really is, in the end? The Boyhood influence feels unmistakable here, the way we cut from a shocking discovery to a bad break up, the way a whole year passes in what feels like the blink of an eye, but this is a breezy and pretty funny hour-thirty that takes place across a single year, not three hours long and drawn out. (Come to think of it, the depressing mom who just wishes her kid would be more grateful feels curbed from Boyhood as well. Look, it's not an issue - I absolutely loved Boyhood, even after all the understandable and predictable "pretentious" backlash.
I really liked Lady Bird. It was charming, quick, and felt very genuine. And it does feel like the kind of movie that'll get better in my memory with time rather than sizzling fast and then burning away. But for now, I can only call it "very good," and say that I "really liked it." Words like "great" and "love" - I'm just not there yet! Maybe one day.
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