Writers and film makers, such as JD Salinger and Amy Heckerling, have written books and produced films about the journey from awkward youth to adulthood that involves knowing who you are and what road you want to take in life that will provide you with a sense of your true self and true identity.
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Being true to yourself is easier to say than to achieve.
Christine McPherson is a high school student struggling with shaping an identity that will cement her place in the world of love, sexuality, friendship, career choices and interactions with parents, especially her mother, Marion.
She challenges her identity at a fundamental level by insisting her name is Lady Bird. The name Christine isn’t sufficient for her as a unique identifier.
Lady Bird is the eye of a teenage hurricane. It may appear calm in the centre when she is alone with her thoughts but there is a swirling maelstrom surrounding her that she calls her life.
That life involves her loving, hateful, endearing, caring, and hostile relationship with her mother, Marion, who takes a hard-hearted and practical approach to living and the decisions that Christine must make in order to secure a realistic future.
Christine’s insistence on being called Lady Bird is only one obstacle in communicating with the mother.
Lady Bird wishes to attend university in New York rather than a community college in her hometown, Sacramento, California, but her school grades and parent’s financial position pushes that dream far into the distance.
It’s not unattainable but strains the exchanges with her mother. Marion has encountered all manner of obstacles.
Although Lady Bird knows that Marion loves her and her mother feels the deepest emotions for her daughter, they nonetheless bring each other to tears.
There are also Lady Bird’s closest friend, Julie; her male friends and first loves, the awkward Danny and the preposterously pretentious Kyle; and her new best friend, Jenna.
Lady Bird discards Julie’s genuine friendship for Jenna’s dreamlike world to which Lady Bird aspires, and adopts Kyle’s inane anarchist pronouncements in her search for meaning and identity.
Her gentle father, Larry, provides a safe harbour for Lady Bird and calms her and accepts that her teenage uncertainties and frailties are an essential part of her realising who and what are truly meaningful.
He helps her shift through the detritus to see the worthy elements of her life.
As Lady Bird travels the roads of a teenager on the verge of adulthood, she slowly develops a realisation that becoming who you really are involves more than a self-centered approach.
Sharing that journey with Lady Bird and Marion makes it a worthwhile journey for the audience. There are also plenty of laughs along the way.
