REVIEW: Catherine, Called Birdy (2022)
May. 20th, 2023 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllCatherine, Called Birdy (2022) Rated: 12A
Adapted and Directed by: Lena Dunham
Based on the book of the same name written by Karen Cushman
Starring: Bella Ramsay, Andrew Scott, Lesley Sharp, Billie Piper
One of the advantages of getting Amazon Prime is that I can watch lots of films that I wasn’t able to previously, and so I chose this highly recommended adaptation of a book I reread last year. I wasn’t disappointed, it’s an entertaining film that’s funny, angry and a little touching, as well as pretty faithful to the book. Some things have been exaggerated for dramatic purposes and there’s been streamlining. The ending is one of the most changed parts when it comes to content, and I found that satisfactory, actually.
Bella Ramsay plays rebel girl Birdy, as Lady Catherine of Stonebridge is nicknamed, a force of nature, intelligent as well as surprisingly well educated for the medieval era. She is possessed of an adventurer’s spirit – we first meet her in what’s basically a mud fight – who is expected to be a lady, which she loathes. There’s Love & Friendshipesque text introducing us to everyone, and a strong voiceover, namely the diary her brother Edward asked Birdy to write in the hope that the reflection involved might help her grow up.
The film foregrounds menstruation more than the book, where it’s present, but here, when Birdy first finds out she’s bleeding, our fourteen-year-old heroine thinks she’s dying until nurse Morwenna explains matters to her. We see a lot of Birdy’s interactions with no-nonsense Morwenna, played by Lesley Sharp, which I heartily approved of.
As well as having to deal with the practicalities, which include cramps, what her menarche means for Birdy is that her impecunious father Rollo (a perfectly cast Andrew Scott, never mind that he occasionally sounds Irish) must not know. For it means she’s old enough to bear children. The reality of daughters as sellable commodities is dramatised through Birdy and her best friend Aelis. Regardless of their wishes, regardless of whether the groom is seven years younger than the teen bride or decades older, if it brings the right amount of coins in, fathers can marry off their daughters. Furthermore, Birdy’s mother (Billie Piper) is pregnant again, and Bridy is all too aware that after her, all her brothers and sisters have been stillborn. Another birth may well endanger her mother’s life.
So, the battle of wits to stop her father finding out begins. When she loses that, the next, very funny campaign is NOT to get married to one of the rich suitors her father invites to the manor house. Fortunately, Birdy is capable of outwitting her father, while quarrelling with her brother Robert, suffering unrequited love and disappointments, and maybe, just maybe, growing up.
There’s a zany comic energy to the film, fired by the youthful dynamo of Birdy. Like most teenage girls, she feels so much, her friendship with Aelis is pitch perfect in its intensity. (If I’m being picky, the gag of Robert repeating what his father said comes too soon after the underling repeating what his employer said.) The film is trying to be entertaining and relevant, so there are anachronisms, one of which is black Saxons, another being covers of pop songs. I don’t know that the film needed to make Perkin gay on top of being a goat boy who wants to be a scholar (although the film doesn’t quite convey the feudal medieval mindset in the way the book does.) Oh well, I suppose it arguably closed off any possibility of a romance between Birdy and her ‘heartsbrother’.
What I really didn’t expect, but was delighted by, was that I recognised the main location – they used Stokesay Castle, Shropshire, which I’ve visited, for the manor house, and Ludlow Castle too, so I kept getting thills from recognising the location as well as seeing the book and universal aspects of girlhood brought to life.
The ending changes the deus ex machina from ‘oh, Shaggy Beard died, you’ll have to marry his son who’s more age appropriate and…washes more regularly, so that’ll be okay because you’ve matured a bit.’ Instead, after Birdy has seen how much her father truly loves her mother and her unborn siblings, Rollo feels guilty when she accepts her ‘last suitor’s money’ and therefore his suit to pay for Robert’s marriage to Aelis, and does what a twenty-first Western teenage girl should expect her father to do. That is, protect her, not being willing to fight a duel for her, which is what Rollo does, but this is a feature film, after all. Typically, Birdy comments on his not being very good at sword fighting. But he somehow wins and she gets to stay a little longer with the family and people she loves, and can address her diary as much to her new twin sisters as Edward. I very much liked her knowing she’ll be a trailblazer for those sisters, She gets to free the birds she’s kept in a cage and run to her future, whatever it will be. As I said, it’s satisfying. And the film made me chortle a lot, which is not always true of so-called ‘comedies’.
[Edited 10/5/25.]
Adapted and Directed by: Lena Dunham
Based on the book of the same name written by Karen Cushman
Starring: Bella Ramsay, Andrew Scott, Lesley Sharp, Billie Piper
One of the advantages of getting Amazon Prime is that I can watch lots of films that I wasn’t able to previously, and so I chose this highly recommended adaptation of a book I reread last year. I wasn’t disappointed, it’s an entertaining film that’s funny, angry and a little touching, as well as pretty faithful to the book. Some things have been exaggerated for dramatic purposes and there’s been streamlining. The ending is one of the most changed parts when it comes to content, and I found that satisfactory, actually.
Bella Ramsay plays rebel girl Birdy, as Lady Catherine of Stonebridge is nicknamed, a force of nature, intelligent as well as surprisingly well educated for the medieval era. She is possessed of an adventurer’s spirit – we first meet her in what’s basically a mud fight – who is expected to be a lady, which she loathes. There’s Love & Friendshipesque text introducing us to everyone, and a strong voiceover, namely the diary her brother Edward asked Birdy to write in the hope that the reflection involved might help her grow up.
The film foregrounds menstruation more than the book, where it’s present, but here, when Birdy first finds out she’s bleeding, our fourteen-year-old heroine thinks she’s dying until nurse Morwenna explains matters to her. We see a lot of Birdy’s interactions with no-nonsense Morwenna, played by Lesley Sharp, which I heartily approved of.
As well as having to deal with the practicalities, which include cramps, what her menarche means for Birdy is that her impecunious father Rollo (a perfectly cast Andrew Scott, never mind that he occasionally sounds Irish) must not know. For it means she’s old enough to bear children. The reality of daughters as sellable commodities is dramatised through Birdy and her best friend Aelis. Regardless of their wishes, regardless of whether the groom is seven years younger than the teen bride or decades older, if it brings the right amount of coins in, fathers can marry off their daughters. Furthermore, Birdy’s mother (Billie Piper) is pregnant again, and Bridy is all too aware that after her, all her brothers and sisters have been stillborn. Another birth may well endanger her mother’s life.
So, the battle of wits to stop her father finding out begins. When she loses that, the next, very funny campaign is NOT to get married to one of the rich suitors her father invites to the manor house. Fortunately, Birdy is capable of outwitting her father, while quarrelling with her brother Robert, suffering unrequited love and disappointments, and maybe, just maybe, growing up.
There’s a zany comic energy to the film, fired by the youthful dynamo of Birdy. Like most teenage girls, she feels so much, her friendship with Aelis is pitch perfect in its intensity. (If I’m being picky, the gag of Robert repeating what his father said comes too soon after the underling repeating what his employer said.) The film is trying to be entertaining and relevant, so there are anachronisms, one of which is black Saxons, another being covers of pop songs. I don’t know that the film needed to make Perkin gay on top of being a goat boy who wants to be a scholar (although the film doesn’t quite convey the feudal medieval mindset in the way the book does.) Oh well, I suppose it arguably closed off any possibility of a romance between Birdy and her ‘heartsbrother’.
What I really didn’t expect, but was delighted by, was that I recognised the main location – they used Stokesay Castle, Shropshire, which I’ve visited, for the manor house, and Ludlow Castle too, so I kept getting thills from recognising the location as well as seeing the book and universal aspects of girlhood brought to life.
The ending changes the deus ex machina from ‘oh, Shaggy Beard died, you’ll have to marry his son who’s more age appropriate and…washes more regularly, so that’ll be okay because you’ve matured a bit.’ Instead, after Birdy has seen how much her father truly loves her mother and her unborn siblings, Rollo feels guilty when she accepts her ‘last suitor’s money’ and therefore his suit to pay for Robert’s marriage to Aelis, and does what a twenty-first Western teenage girl should expect her father to do. That is, protect her, not being willing to fight a duel for her, which is what Rollo does, but this is a feature film, after all. Typically, Birdy comments on his not being very good at sword fighting. But he somehow wins and she gets to stay a little longer with the family and people she loves, and can address her diary as much to her new twin sisters as Edward. I very much liked her knowing she’ll be a trailblazer for those sisters, She gets to free the birds she’s kept in a cage and run to her future, whatever it will be. As I said, it’s satisfying. And the film made me chortle a lot, which is not always true of so-called ‘comedies’.
[Edited 10/5/25.]
