{"id":21793,"date":"2018-02-24T11:57:51","date_gmt":"2018-02-24T01:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=21793"},"modified":"2018-10-16T10:37:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T00:37:24","slug":"lady-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=21793","title":{"rendered":"Lady Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ladybirdposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Great Gerwig
\nWriter:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Greta Gerwig
\nCast:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Timothy Chalamet<\/p>\n

C<\/span>hristine McPherson is a high school senior in Sacramento.\u00a0 Perturbed by her drab suburban surroundings, she decides to rename herself Ladybird to add a bit of colour into her life.\u00a0 She dreams big and has hopes of moving away to New York for college.\u00a0 Or at least to Connecticut.\u00a0 She’ll take what she can get.<\/p>\n

Ladybird<\/em> is a Slice of Life comedy drama by Greta Gerwig.\u00a0 When it comes to observational films about day-to-day life that run on the art house circuit, the spectrum ranges from grounded works that are rooted in realism like\u00a0Happy Go Lucky<\/em> or\u00a0Another Year<\/em> (both fantastic Mike Leigh films) to quirkier indy fare such as\u00a0Juno\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Little Miss Sunshine<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Ladybird<\/em> is a film that lands squarely in the middle of that spectrum.\u00a0 Christine naming herself Ladybird is about the most ostentatious aspect of the film.\u00a0 The rest of Gerwig’s film explores subtle truisms about family life, sex, work and modern American culture.<\/p>\n

Ladybird<\/em> has rightly drawn a lot of praise and attention in large part thanks to a strong central performance from the irrepressible Saoirse Ronan who is now up for her third Oscar nomation for Best Actress.\u00a0 She is just twenty three.<\/p>\n

Ronan is\u00a0hugely entertaining in her turn\u00a0as a precocious Sacramento teenager who is finding her way in the world.\u00a0 Ladybird wants to rebel but no so hard that she jeopardises her grades and chances of getting into a good college.\u00a0 She wants a cool boyfriend but her hamfisted approach involves greeting them with firm business-like handshakes.\u00a0 Her mum drives her nuts but she is also one of her best friends and confidants.\u00a0 Like most people her age, Ladybird is a bundle of contradictions.<\/p>\n

What makes\u00a0Ladybird<\/em> such a fantastic work is that it feels authentic.\u00a0 Each character is fully realized and has their own\u00a0strengths and faults as well as their strange little idiosyncrasies.\u00a0 I often found myself comparing characters in the film to people I knew in my own life.\u00a0\u00a0I know somehow who says or does exactly that!<\/em><\/p>\n

The film also deftly\u00a0 avoids lazy tropes and cliches.\u00a0 For instance, a subplot involving a high school student who has a crush on her teacher doesn’t go in the direction you think it would.\u00a0 The rich girl in the class isn’t necessarily the Mean Girl you’d expect.\u00a0 The guidance counsellor isn’t a kook or a kumbaya idealist either.\u00a0 Even the smallest roles in the film are well rounded.<\/p>\n

\"ladybird\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Saoirse Ronan is the highlight of the show but the rest of the cast in\u00a0Ladybird<\/em> are universally excellent also.\u00a0 It is Laurie Metcalf who has received the most plaudits as Ladybird’s long suffering mother Marion.\u00a0 But my two personal favourites were Beanie Feldstein who plays Ladybird’s earnest bff Julie and Tracy Letts who puts in a brilliant understated performance as Ladybird’s anxiety-riddled unemployed father Larry.<\/p>\n

There is plenty to soak in and enjoy with\u00a0Ladybird<\/em>.\u00a0 There’s been a metric ton of fantastic films that have been released over the last two months so its very possible that it gets overlooked compared to some of its big budget contemporaries out there.\u00a0 It’s not a film that tackles the biggest issues or goes about its business in the flashiest way.\u00a0 But its a story about understanding where you grew up and learning to appreciate your home and thats a universal theme that I think everyone can appreciate.\u00a0 If you have the chance, make the time to watch\u00a0Ladybird<\/em>.\u00a0 You won’t regret it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2002, an artistically inclined seventeen-year-old girl comes of age in Sacramento, California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2703,2701,2446,2702],"class_list":["post-21793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-great-gerwig","tag-laurie-metcalf","tag-saoirse-ronan","tag-timothy-chalamet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21793"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21815,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21793\/revisions\/21815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}