There’s a lot of fun and ambition in  writer/director Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird.” She shows us life in 2002, the year after 9/11, and the life of a girl entering adulthood. It’s the kind of material I admired more than I did in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” It has something called heart.

Saorise Ronan electrifies as Christine McPherson or Lady Bird (as she likes to call herself), a girl who wants to escape Sacramento, CA and must rely on college applications to do so. She has a best friend named Julie (Beanie Feldstein), a stubborn mother (Laurie Metcalf), a recently laid-off father (Tracy Letts), and a weird adoptive brother (Jordan Rodrigues); and attends a Catholic school.

She writes applications to any East Coast college, especially New York, since less people would apply there at the time. In the meantime, she ends up dating a student named Danny (Lucas Hedges), who can’t come out of the closet, and later, a musician named Kyle (Timothée Chalamet), whom she decides to lose her virginity to.

Most scenes in “Lady Bird” involve Lady Bird arguing with her mother on her choices and ambitions, while at the same time, showing us their affective relationship.

Greta Gerwig’s best work is filled with heart, humor, and ambition. Ronan says what’s on her mind and her character is able to think and feel; and Metcalf also shines as her mother. I wasn’t sure on a couple of things, but somehow, I managed to grasp the concept of it all.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Categories: comedy