Lady Bird Review

Gerwig cuts fast. Most scenes here run under ninety seconds, entering late and leaving early, so a senior year in Sacramento passes as fragments that add up without a single montage. The opening states the terms: mother and daughter crying together at an audiobook, then arguing, then Lady Bird throwing herself out of a moving car. Saoirse Ronan plays teenage self-invention without any of the softening a studio would have applied, and Laurie Metcalf makes the mother's cruelty and her exhaustion the same gesture, which is why the dressing room scene about the prom dress lands the way it does.

Tracy Letts gives the saddest performance in the film in maybe twelve minutes of screen time. Sam Levy shoots on a slightly degraded stock that puts 2002 into the image itself. The class writing is exact: the house on the wrong side of the tracks, the tuition, the lie about the address. Our one reservation is that both boyfriends are sketches beside the women. The final phone message is a perfect ending.