Review: Greta Gerwig’s ‘Lady Bird’ Is Big-Screen Perfection

“I want you to be the very best version of yourself,” says her judgmental, habitually disappointed mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf).

“But what if this is the best version?” Lady Bird responds. It’s a sharp, sardonic line (one of many) and also an anguished existential question.

Christine (to use the name Marion gave her) wants to satisfy her mother, which is a difficult task because the standards seem impossibly high and subject to change without notice. She also wants to be true to her own desires and convictions, which is difficult for other reasons.

While “Lady Bird” honors the gravity of Christine’s struggle, it hardly neglects the everyday absurdity of her plight. The very first scene begins in tears. Mother and daughter, listening to an audiobook of “The Grapes of Wrath” while driving home from a college tour, cry over the novel’s moving final sentences. Their shared moment of literary catharsis quickly devolves into an argument, which is punctuated by a startling and hilarious jolt of physical comedy (one of many).

In tone and structure, after all, this is a teenage comedy. It finds humor in the eternally renewable cycle of senior year: homecoming and prom; math tests and school plays; the agonizing stages of the “admissions process.” Along the way, Christine undergoes other, extracurricular rites of passage. She falls in love for the first time and has sex for the first time. She trades in her loyal, longtime best friend (Beanie Feldstein) for a richer, more popular girl (Odeya Rush). She fights with her mother and her older brother, Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues), and leans on her father, Larry (Tracy Letts), an affable fellow with troubles of his own.

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You might think you’ve seen this all before. You probably have, but never quite like this. What Ms. Gerwig has done — and it’s by no means a small accomplishment — is to infuse one of the most convention-bound, rose-colored genres in American cinema with freshness and surprise. The characters can look like familiar figures: the sad dad and the disapproving mom; the sullen brother and his goth girlfriend (Marielle Scott); the mean girls and the cool teachers; the too-perfect boyfriend (Lucas Hedges) and the dirtbag boyfriend (Timothée Chalamet). None of them are caricatures, though, and while everyone is mocked, nobody is treated with cruelty or contempt, at least by Ms. Gerwig. (Lady Bird is not always so kind.)

The script is exceptionally well-written, full of wordplay and lively argument. Every line sounds like something a person might actually say, which means that the movie is also exceptionally well acted. It is not too quick to soothe the abrasions of class and family. The McPhersons are hardly poor, but the daily toll of holding onto the ragged middle of the middle class is evident in Larry’s melancholy and Marion’s ill humor. They are a loving family, but their steadfast devotion to one another doesn’t always express itself as kindness. They are real people, honestly portrayed.

That might make “Lady Bird” sound drab and dutiful, but it’s the opposite. I wish I could convey to you just how thrilling this movie is. I wish I could quote all of the jokes and recount the best offbeat bits. I’d tell you about the sad priest and the football coach, about the communion wafers and the Sacramento real estate, about the sly, jaunty editing rhythms, the oddly apt music choices and the way Ms. Ronan drops down on the grass in front of her house when she receives an important piece of mail. I’m tempted to catalog the six different ways the ending can make you cry.

I’ll settle for one: the bittersweet feeling of having watched someone grow in front of your eyes, into a different and in some ways improved version of herself. In life, that’s a messy, endless process, which is one reason we need movies. Or to put it another way, even though Lady Bird will never be perfect, “Lady Bird” is.