Catherine Called Birdy premieres exclusively on Prime Video Oct. 7.
No matter how you spin it, getting tweens and teens who aren’t readers to give a live-action period piece the time of day is a hard sell. Among the only assured audiences are fans of novelist Karen Cushman’s award-winning YA book Catherine Called Birdy, who will likely flock to this adaptation. But for everyone else who may be far more ambivalent, director/writer Lena Dunham makes some wise choices meant to entice contemporary eyes to her rambunctious and appealing take on the tale.
Like Cushman’s book, the cinematic version of Catherine Called Birdy is also told in diary style in the literal voice of precocious 14-year-old Lady Catherine, or Birdy (Bella Ramsey). The youngest and wildest child of Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott) and Lady Aislinn (Billie Piper), Birdy spends her days running free amongst her family’s rural estate of Stonebridge Manor. Being a daughter in 1290 means Birdy’s real value comes to bear when she hits puberty, as that’s the time when she can be married off to any man willing to pay her family a healthy dowry. While Birdy is rather smart, she’s never been interested in the details of how that might actually apply to her. But she’s forced to face it head on when she has her first period and then soon after finds out that her father has mismanaged their finances and is in dire need of revenue so they don’t lose their property.
Kicking and screaming (literally), Birdy finds herself unceremoniously thrown into the marital pool, being introduced to a range of potential suitors, all of whom she works overtime attempting to care off. In the midst of it all, she seeks advice and example from her close circle including best friend, Aelis (Isis Hainsworth); favorite Uncle George (Joe Alwyn) and his older bride Ethelfritha (Sophie Okonedo); nursemaid, Morwenna (Lesley Sharp); and peasant bestie, Perkin (Michael Woolfitt). Each has a unique perspective on her plight, and offers advice that she has to parse out in order to figure out how to make peace with the fate the patriarchy demands she accept.
As writer and director, Dunham works overtime to liven up the period piece setting with an overabundance of techniques and devices meant to keep Birdy in a state of perpetual motion. Aside from the near constant projection of her inner thoughts as voice over, there’s also a steady drip of contemporary pop songs rearranged to sound like Medieval ballads. And composer Carter Burwell adds to the din with a rather obtrusive choral-infused score that has a tendency to compete with some of the more intimate, emotional scenes that would have worked just as well without it. Of course, all of this busyness is in service of not boring younger audiences, but for everyone else, it gets a bit exhausting to sit within.
On the positive side, Bella Ramsey carries the whole film on her young shoulders with confidence and charm. Even when Birdy is at her most petulant and immature (which can be often), Ramsey manages to keep us on her side because she’s so spritely and has great comedic timing (even with Medieval jokes). She translates Birdy’s innocence and frustration for the world around her beautifully, and evokes real sympathy as her situation grows more dire as her ultimate suitor is revealed as the lecherous and smelly Lord nicknamed Shaggy Beard (played with great sass by Paul Kaye). And when the story gets more serious, Ramsey steps up and goes toe to toe with adults twice her age to create some especially memorable moments involving Okonedo, Woolfitt, and then Scott when their combatant father/daughter dynamic takes a climactic turn.
The movie feels overstuffed by the middle mark, as jokes are barely given time to land.
As a piece, the manic pacing of the script would have benefitted from more spaces to just breathe and an overall trimming down of some characters that come across as afterthoughts. The movie feels overstuffed by the middle mark, as jokes are barely given time to land before Birdy’s onto the next thing or the kaleidoscope of characters become hard to follow. But when Dunham does allow for smaller moments to play out, she knows how to mine them for their emotional potential.
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