[7]

Saoirse Ronan stars as the title character, an anxiety-ridden, pretentious, troubled — well, normal, I guess — teenager who does lots of teenagery things, like having sex for the first time and trying to get into college. Watching Lady Bird is like being a fly on the wall inside the character’s lower-middle-class home. The central conflict is between Lady Bird and her mother, played compellingly by Laurie Metcalf (TV’s Roseanne). We’ve seen this kind of relationship many times before, but writer/director Greta Gerwig does a good job making this one specific and believable. You feel for both the mother and the daughter, and you can understand where the volatility in their relationship is coming from. Metcalf is Oscar-worthy here, too.

As a character, Lady Bird is trying to figure out who she is and where she belongs. She does a lot of stupid things and learns from her mistakes. But as a character, I had to hold her at arm’s length because she kinda scared me. But all teenaged girls scare me. They are truly frightening creatures that often defy rational thought. Lady Bird may have peeled back the curtain ever so slightly on that great, horrifying mystery, but I never really related with Ronan’s character. I related much more with the terrific roster of supporting characters — from Metcalf’s character, to her beleaguered out-of-work father (played by Killer Joe scribe Tracy Letts), to the Catholic guidance counselor played lovingly by Lois Smith, to the closeted classmate played by Lucas Hedges (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Manchester by the Sea).