Admittedly, I avoid movies like Lady Bird (2017).  I do so because I am an idealist.  The film covers a lot of themes that would be of interest to a self-styled Catholic reviewer.  The main character, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), goes to a Catholic school, there are nuns and priests in prominent roles, and it deals with many social topics on which Catholicism is known to take a prominent and (supposedly) controversial stance.  What gives me pause is the realism with which they are handled.  I want to have that pinnacle to which to aspire.  What is seen here is what I would imagine life in high school to be like right now.  Having been a youth minister for a number of years, I know how hard it is to get teenagers to take God seriously.  An argument can be made that it is me that is in the wrong.  After all, Jesus says in Luke 5:32, “I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”  To make that call, He had to be with sinners, in other words, the kinds of people you see in this movie, though the label applies to us all.  In short, there are some that need Jesus more, and those are the ones about which I will be talking.  Perhaps by the end, you will see what is missing.

Lady Bird and her mother, Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf), are driving back to their home in Sacramento, California, as the film opens.  So that I do not have to repeatedly write the title, I will refer to her as Christine.  This is not an insignificant choice as she prefers to go by the name she has given herself, which is one of the many sources of contention between herself and Marion.  Appellation aside, Marion has a tendency to be critical of Christine, going so far as to tell her daughter that the budding young woman will not amount to anything.  This is one of the many reasons why Christine desires to go to college out of state, preferably some place she thinks is more cultured, like on the East Coast.  Because she does not get the kind of love and affection she so clearly desires, Christine seeks it out in others at school.  She does have one best friend, Julianne “Julie” Steffans (Beanie Feldstein), though they are among what you would consider the social outcasts.  In a bid to do something a little higher minded, Christine decides to audition for the upcoming musical to be put on by her school and the neighboring all-boys Catholic institution.  It is during these try-outs that she meets Daniel “Danny” O’Neill (Lucas Hedges).  He ends up being the lead in the production, but he also notices Christine and they start dating.  Such is their relationship that he invites her to spend Thanksgiving with his family, which exposes her to the wealthier side of Sacramento.  Things are going swimmingly until after their opening performance, she walks into the men’s room where they are celebrating their triumph, doing so because of a long line, and catches him making out with another boy.  Though her and Julie mourn Christine’s break-up while listening to “Crash Into Me” by the Dave Matthews Band, she is not down for long.  This is because while they are out one night, Christine notices Kyle Scheible (Timothée Chalamet) playing base for a local band.  After the Danny incident, and while working at a coffee shop, Christine flirts with Kyle when he comes for a cup.  She is also intrigued by his smoking, the fact that he is reading A People’s History of the United States (1980) by Howard Zinn, and spouting a bunch of anti-establishment nonsense.  The problem, though, is that he is part of a different social strata, one several notches above hers.  The key to getting into it is by concurrently ignoring Julie and befriending Jenna Walton (Odeya Rush), the most popular girl in school.  To do so, Christine tells some more lies about herself, namely that she lives in the grandiose house in which she had spent Thanksgiving with Danny. So long as nobody knows the truth, she is able to get away with the façade.  The problems begin when she makes an inappropriate comment during a school presentation about the dangers of abortion.  This brings her a suspension from school, which gives her time to, among other things, have sex with Kyle.  This turns out to be less than satisfactory for her when admits that he is not a virgin.  The next issue arises when Jenna comes to where she thinks Christine lives, only to discover that her friend literally lives on the other side of the tracks.  There is one bright spot in her life, though, and that comes with being wait listed from one of the East Coast universities to which she applied.  This is a fact she has kept from her mother, who does not think it wise to go so far away for college.  For the moment, though, this little success, and the fact that everything else has turned out poorly, has helped Christine realize that her life is not so bad.  Thus, instead of going to senior prom with Kyle, who does not have the decency to come to the door to pick her up, she ditches them to spend the night with Julie.  She also makes some amends with Danny, though it is he who inadvertently lets on that Christine has been waitlisted at an East Coast school when he sees the McPhersons after graduation.  For a while Marion will not speak to her daughter, which is further complicated when Christine receives full admission.  Marion will not come into the airport to see Christine off, instead opting cry on her husband’s, Larry McPherson (Tracy Letts), shoulder. As Christine is settling into her dorm room in New York, though, she discovers an envelope full of letters Marion had written her daughter.  Following a night of too much drinking, then stopping into a church the next morning, we end with Christine calling Marion, the daughter reminding the mother how much she likes her given name and that she loves her.

In talking about Lady Bird from a Catholic perspective, I could focus on any number of topics.  There is the hard-to-understand abortion discussion.  The speaker is expressing her gratefulness that her mother did not about her, but for some reason Christine counters this by saying her vagina is not ugly.  Huh?  On the plus side, there is Sister Sarah Joan (Lois Smith).  One of the things Jenna does to get in with the “in crowd” is to decorate the back of the nun’s car with “Sister Sarah is married to Jesus.”  Wonderfully, the movie has the female religious giving the only sensible response to this silly prank: to thank Christine.  Unwittingly, the teenager had affixed the truth to the vehicle.  What is arguably the meatier theme is the relationship between Christine and Marion.  At one point, despite mom’s protests of love, the daughter wants to hear Marion say that she likes Christine.  What is missing from their interactions is any attempt on Marion’s part to model Christ-like love, or that which Mary had for Jesus.  Then again, had Marion been better with this, there probably would not have been this movie.  As it is, the emotional scars that it leaves on child and mother are obvious.  Further, this is not meant to excuse Christine’s behavior.  While Marion did not do her daughter any favors, Christine is at the age of discernment, meaning, basically, that the Church says a person should know better than to have pre-marital sex or buy pornographic magazines just because you can do so.  In a broader sense, what I would point to is something that St. Pope John Paul II the Great never tired of reminding us: that God is love.  When our characters are behaving more in line with this concept, things are working out well for them.  When they are not, they are crying about the poor decisions they have made.  Luckily, because God truly is love, we have recourse to Him.

I am not sure if I would recommend Lady Bird.  As I indicated in the introduction, I am an idealist.  The lessons that Christine gains from her experiences are valid, but fraught with too many pitfalls that I wish people would take greater pains to avoid.