Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut Lady Bird has become the best reviewed film of all time. Until now, Toy Story 2 was number one on Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates critics’ reviews, but since its release in the US, Lady Bird – a film about a teenage girl who wants more – has leapt ahead. Which pleases me. Not that I wish ill on an animated sheriff or his thick space mate, but this film is a sort of heaven.
As well as a perfect portrait of an imperfect girl, it’s an exquisite example of one of the least appreciated genres of film – the mother-daughter drama. The ma-dra, if you will. The mo-dau mystery, perhaps. Personal highlights include: Mermaids – Cher bringing up Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci on a diet of canapés and girl group songs, with death and religion humming away in the background; Carrie – whose mother punishes her for having breasts and also being a witch, she has to die; Mommie Dearest – the very fabulous biopic about Joan Crawford’s abusive relationship with her adopted daughter; and Grey Gardens – two women raging against fading beauty in a house that crumbles before our eyes. Lady Bird is right up there with them, with Saoirse Ronan in the title role (yes Lady Bird is her character’s given name, she says, in the sense that “It’s given to me, by me”) and Laurie Metcalf as Marion, the mother who loves her in a way that makes it feel like war.
There’s a scene in a charity shop, Thrift Town, where in the same breath of an argument about the mother’s ability to be lovely to a virtual stranger, but monstrous to her daughter, the two come together over finding a perfect dress, 50s, sleeveless, peach. This, says Gerwig, was an illustration of “How mothers and daughters are with each other. They fight and they love really hard.” Though there’s nuance and tenderness, tears and slapstick, each moment of softness is pierced with a stalactite. At times Marion’s criticisms are so relentless, so pass-agg they make you wince and hold yourself. Lady Bird asks if her mother actually “likes her”. Marion’s reply is: “Of course, I love you.” “But do you like me?” she repeats, and her mother, what a cow, refuses to answer. She’s drawn by Gerwig as a woman who again and again is shocked to hear how bitter she sounds, but is trapped behind too many windows to do anything about it.
I came out of the screening sort of dazed – the first thought was how hard it is to be a decent mother, after being a woman for so long, and the second was: “I should call my mum.” At what point does a woman stop being a daughter and become just a mother? It was a shock to leave that velvet dark and emerge into the afternoon all full of questions about life, full of feelings that I was on a breaking bridge between this and that. Newly 37, I feel like I’ve spent my adulthood studiously learning how to be a really excellent 17-year-old. And at the same time I’m mumming furiously, one eye always on incoming traffic, one finger always pointing out planes.
I continue to be fascinated by the expectation that once you become a mother you have completed the level before, as if childbirth is the final boss to be conquered before you move on to the next game. Whether it’s a career to be brushed aside in favour of a job that’s organic and linen-based and will fit around school pick-ups, or friendships exchanged for new, local co-dependencies like unwanted gifts at M&S, or your daughterhood – your girlhood, your identity – lost, there is little acknowledgement that a woman continues to be and want a multitude of things when also a parent. And with that, inevitably, are the horrors of personality, pitted with experience, that mean even if you decide, as a project, to be a good mother, there is the obstacle of yourself, there, saying mean things about ambition and shoes.
Though this is a film about a teenage girl growing up, the real coming-of-age story is that of her mother, forced to be better. It speaks in a voice we’ve learned to shush, about the trickiness of our formative relationships, ones soundtracked by the slamming of doors. But these are the type of characters, questions and relationships many women crave more of, and the kind of film that deserves to break records.
I loved it; it helped.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
