[CRITICAL] LADY BIRD

First full length feature film for Greta Gerwig, a key figure in the independent cinema US, Lady Bird oscillates between melancholy, humour and autobiography.

“Don’t let it fly too your expectations, for not having to crawl like a worm from the earth”, would be the perfect manifesto of the mother of the self-proclaimed Lady Bird. This quote, taken from the work capital of John Steinbeck, the Grapes of Wrath, moved in permanently at the top of the film of Greta Gerwig so that the opening shall convene the History of the Great Depression and of the hundreds of thousands of americans, came from the East, who have dreamed of elsewhere, a hidden paradise, where the hard days of the harvest are a symbol of peace, prosperity and equality. On these last lines, which close the journey of the 30’s, the emotion as fleeting as sincere sprang suddenly before that parental conflict does not take over violently their rights.

But for the young Lady Bird, this traditional trip, not to say road trip, should be carried out in the opposite direction, who aspire to leave this California a sad monochrome on which is printed an existential vacuum of less and less bearable. Therefore, parade the recurring motifs that build the teen-movie american ; amourettes frantic, deafness, dialogue, passing by the traditional bal de promotion, here hijacked.

This ready to smile, in a hollow, in this fresco in which each one seeks his own place, his sexuality, is suspicious of institutions, where the Iraq war seems to be torturing the specter of Viet Nam, where the feeling of not belonging at a time dominates, it is certainly to attend to the multiplication of quotations humorous recurrent themes of the film across the atlantic, in particular, the old demons-the legacy of the 70’s. And because Greta Gerwig is placed with Noah Baumbach and Mike Mills, in particular, his taste for independent cinema US, sometimes irritating, is affirmed in LADY BIRD.

But at the last moment, the loss of the child prodigy became a reality, and as a palindrome, LADY BIRD ends exactly where it started, on this same note of melancholy. As if the dream, made accessible after so much of struggle and désenchantements, had turned into a terrible misfortune. Then, as in John Steinbeck, it is moving forward with the next slender in front, with only one friend, the hope of escape, as the history will be stored on our side. The case of Greta Gerwig, you know the rest, blessed.

Sofiane

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