Delayed Reaction: Catherine Called Birdy

Premise: A young woman in the Middle Ages doesn't want to be married off to an old man.

Lena Dunham laid out her mission statement early on in Girls. In the first episode, Hannah walks back the statement "I want to be the voice of my generation" to "I want to be a voice in a generation". This is what made most of the discourse that followed around the show so funny to me. It was often judged as a show saying something about life as a whole in the early 2010s, when it's actually a show about very specific people with a very specific experience. Applied more broadly, I'd say Dunham is at her best when writing about characters who don't fit in and don't appreciate the comforts they enjoy. The titular Girls all had safety nets which allowed them a lot of opportunity to be idiots.

She's applied that same skill to Catherine Called Birdy. This is one of those movies that was initially lost in the streaming content deluge. Then it kept coming up in "Do you know what else I liked, actually?" comments. Given some of the complaints about Hannah in Girls and the absolute success of Catherine in this, I now wonder why Lena Dunham hasn't been writing teenagers since the beginning. The same things that work for teenage Birdy are so much less palatable in the adult Hannah.

Catherine Called Birdy is a success because it is happily anachronistic. Catherine is a modern girl. She has a privileged life but hasn't yet had to face the unfortunate compromises that come with that life in that time. Bella Ramsey is a lot of fun as a tomboy who wants to hold back womanhood as long as she can. Ramsey is a great Lena Dunham proxy in that - I can't put this any nicer - it's easier to naturally root for her. When Dunham writes for herself, she likes to lean into the least flattering parts of her character. Ramsey is better at finding ways to make the same actions rootworthy. And that's what this movie needed.

I can't say anything specific about the plot did much for me. It's really the overall sense of humor and Ramsey's performance that did it for me.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend