History Film / LadyBird

[[caption-width-right:310:''[[{{Tagline}} Fly away home.]]'']]

* ADateWithRosiePalms: Lady Bird and Julie discuss their preferred methods, and Lady Bird later indulges herself while thinking of Kyle.

* {{Jerkass}}: How Marion is initially presented. Also Jenna, who is even flippant about suicide. [[spoiler: Kyle too]].

* MeaningfulRename: Lady Bird is her given name, she explains, because she gave it to herself. [[spoiler: At the end of the film, she starts going by Christine again]].

* StargazingScene: The film has a star gazing scene involving Lady Bird and her first love Danny. She asks him to pick a star for them and then they start cuddling. Afterward, they discuss a name for their star with Danny suggesting "Claude" which Lady Bird finds too pretentious so she suggests "Bruce" instead.

* BaitAndSwitchAccusation: While Lady Bird is stealing a magazine from a shop, she hears Danny shout "Stop" but when she turns around, it becomes clear he was actually talking to his sibling.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Lady Bird finally gets what she wants and is attending college in New York, but gets badly homesick and calls her mother to let her know she understands her better.]]
* BothSidesHaveAPoint: The film centers on the conflict between Lady Bird and her mother, but avoids completely taking sides with either of them, portraying both of them as having legitimate complaints at various points. Which one of them, if either, is the more sympathetic is largely left up to the viewer.

* DelayedFamilyAcceptance: Implied. Larry instantly agrees to help Lady Bird apply for expensive colleges on the East Coast, despite the financial burden which leads to him having to remortgage their house. Her mother Marion, on the other hand, is furious and barely speaks to Lady Bird for the rest of the movie, both for going behind her back and for being a Spoiled Brat. However, at the very end after dropping her off at the airport, Marion breaks down in tears and appears to accept Lady Bird's dream.

* DoNotCallMePaul: Christine is very very insistent on being called "Lady Bird." [[spoiler:She gives up on it when she moves to New York, in an apparent attempt to reinvent herself.]]

* EveryoneHasStandards: The cool kids are not especially upstanding people but none of them ever judge Lady Bird for her working-class background.

** Played more seriously in two cases with Lady Bird. In the first case, she clearly doesn't fit in with the "cool kids" of her school, [[spoiler: which culminates in her ditching them to go to the prom with Julie.]] Secondly, she's [[spoiler: not exactly comfortable in New York at the movie's end, and ends up homesick.]]
* FiveSecondForeshadowing: Lady Bird notes how "dexterous" Kyle is in putting on a condom in spite of being a virgin. A few minutes later, [[spoiler:he admits that he's not a virgin]].

* {{Gayngst}}: [[spoiler:What Danny goes through, much to Lady Bird's consternation, though when he apologizes and breaks down, she offers him solace.]]
* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: A pro-life speaker is brought to the school and tries convincing the students about this with a story of her own mother who decided against getting an abortion. Lady Bird is not convinced by this, and tells the woman so quite rudely, resulting in her suspension.

* HatedHometown: Lady Bird's loathing of Sacramento is her impetus to try and attend college on the East Coast. [[spoiler:However, Sister Sarah Joan notes that she writes of Sacramento with detail that borders on affection, and by the end of the movie, she's entering Sunday mass in a Catholic Church, clearly homesick.]]
* HeCleansUpNicely: Miguel has a very grunge-y aesthetic, with lots of facial piercings that Lady Bird points out as probably getting in the way of a job offer. [[spoiler:He inadvertently shows up to the same job interview Larry's going to, cleaned up with no piercings, and looks very handsome. He gets the job.]]
* HopeSpot: Lady Bird repairs her friendship with Julie, ostensibly dumps her pretentious boyfriend, graduates high school, and all is well in the family. Then the audience gets reminded, for the first time in what seems like a while, that Lady Bird and her father were working behind Marion's back to apply to colleges on the east coast. [[spoiler:This sets off what is arguably Lady Bird's biggest crisis in the movie – dealing with her mother's silent treatment for months until she leaves for college, and ultimately realizing (after a wicked bender, no less) that she wouldn't be where she is if not for her family, particularly her mother, and also her hometown.]]

* InformedAttribute: InvokedTrope. Apart from [[spoiler:his pills]], we never see [[spoiler:Larry's struggle with depression - because he's actively hiding it from Lady Bird, and keeps doing so even after Marion admits it to her. In reality, it can also be quite hard for others to tell]].
* InformedFlaw: Marion claims that Lady Bird is a lazy student. Yet we see Lady Bird at least making an attempt at participating in a math olympiad, despite math not being her strong point, and are told that she actually received pretty fair SAT scores. Subsequently, she manages to get into the college of her choice, albeit while on a waiting list, and even receives a scholarship to defray the costs. This all suggests that Marion's criticism is unfounded.

** One of the film's hallmarks. Just one example: the sex scene between Lady Bird and Kyle goes from tense and romantic, to humorous when she realizes that he's already finished, to [[spoiler: heartbreaking when Kyle comments that he's lost count of the number of girls he's slept with, despite saying that he was a virgin]], to devastating when Lady Bird walks out of the house and sees Kyle's dying father with an oxygen tank in the living room.

* SilentTreatment: Marion refuses to speak to Lady Bird [[spoiler:after she learns Lady Bird applied to East Coast colleges behind her back, even though she only got waitlisted. She continues to hardly speak to her daughter until she drops her off at the airport, where she becomes distraught and regretful in the car.]]

* SternNun: Subverted with Sister Joan. While she is strict at certain times, it's also made clear that she's very reasonable and cares very much about her students. [[spoiler:She even reacts to Lady Bird and Jenna's "Just Married to Jesus" prank by [[ActuallyPrettyFunny admitting it was funny.]]]] Even the rebellious Lady Bird, who clearly doesn't take to authority well, ends up liking her.

* TheirFirstTime: Lady Bird and Kyle have theirs, [[spoiler:though it's revealed Kyle was not only lying about being a virgin in the heat of the moment, but he not only lost count of the people he's slept with but was also [[LousyLoversAreLosers terrible in bed]] much to Lady Bird's displeasure.]] Lady Bird is in a state of bliss until the truth is revealed, at which point she reveals she didn't actually have that great of a time.

* UnexpectedVirgin: Subverted. The TroubledButCute, cool Kyle tells Lady Bird he's a virgin [[spoiler:and is later revealed to have been lying.]]

* WasTooHardOnHer: Granted, she never actually says it, but Marion's face just ''screams'' this [[spoiler: as she drives away from the airport, with Lady Bird headed for New York.]]

* CryCute:
** Lady Bird does this while hanging out with Julie, right after she discovers [[spoiler:Danny making out with another boy in the men's room.]]
** And again after [[spoiler: she loses her virginity to Kyle, only to discover that she wasn't his first and he doesn't even care that it hurt her that he lied to her.]]

* TheirFirstTime: Lady Bird and Kyle have theirs, [[spoiler:though it's revealed Kyle was not only lying about being a virgin in the heat of the moment, but he's also lost count of the people he's slept with, much to Lady Bird's displeasure.]] Lady Bird is in a state of bliss until the truth is revealed, at which point she reveals she didn't actually have that great of a time.

* EveryoneHasStanddards: The cool kids are not especially upstanding people but none of them ever judge Lady Bird for her working-class background.

* AdultFear: Seeing your child waste the opportunities you have struggled to provide for her -- not to mention the looming specter of being unable to provide for her at all. Lady Bird's mom and dad never talk about this directly, but then, it's a ComingOfAgeStory; the whole ''point'' is that Lady Bird hasn't grown up enough to understand it.

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: When Lady Bird opines she wishes her mother liked her, Marion replies that of course, she loves Lady Bird. Lady Bird then replies, "But do you ''like'' me?" and Marion is left unable to answer.
* AsYouKnow: In the opening scene Lady Bird mentions to her mother that it's the year 2002.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: [[spoiler:Sister Sarah Joan has this reaction to Lady Bird and Jenna's "Married to Jesus" prank, with the result of her not getting into trouble.]]

''Lady Bird'' is a 2017 [[ComingOfAgeStory coming-of-age]] {{dramedy}} film, written and directed by Creator/GretaGerwig as her debut solo directorial effort (she'd previously co-directed ''Nights and Weekends'' with Joe Swanberg) and starring Creator/SaoirseRonan, with Creator/LaurieMetcalf, Creator/TracyLetts, Creator/LucasHedges, Creator/TimotheeChalamet, Creator/BeanieFeldstein, Stephen [=McKinley=] Henderson, and Creator/LoisSmith in supporting roles.

The semi-autobiographical film centers around Christine "Lady Bird" [=McPherson=] (Ronan) during the course of her 2002–03 senior year at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California, including her attempts at finding love and getting into a college far away from her hometown, and the conflicts with her strong-willed mother Marion (Metcalf).

* ParentalBlamelessness: The film seems to sympathize a lot with Lady Bird's mother, appearing to imply that, even though her behavior is not always sympathetic, she is doing the best she can in a difficult family situation. Indeed, the film ends with the protagonist [[spoiler: calling her and saying sorry (for defying her in conspiring with her father to get her into an East Coast school.)]] However, when one follows the mother's actual actions throughout the film, it becomes clear that the latter was emotionally abusive and that it was effectively she who drove Lady Bird away from her.

* TakeThat: Part of Gerwig's love letter to her hometown involves taking shots at the dull unadventurous mildly conservative tone of Sacramento, including Lady Bird's description of it as "the Midwest of California" and the winner of an opening quote by fellow Sacramentan Joan Didion: "Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento."

In making the film, Gerwig set out to offer a [[DistaffCounterpart female counterpart]] to coming-of-age films like ''Film/The400Blows'' and ''Film/{{Boyhood}}'', and spent years writing the film's script, with it at one point being over 350 pages.

The semi-autobiographical film centers around Christine "Lady Bird" [=McPherson=] (Ronan) during the course of her 2002–03 senior year at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California, including her attempts at finding love and getting into a college far away from her hometown and the conflicts with her strong-willed mother Marion (Metcalf).