Catherine Called Birdy: Smells Like Teen Spirit, Circa 14th Century (with a Female-Centric View)

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B+

Catherine Called Birdy is an easy film to like if you don’t look too closely—and you’ll get no pressure from director Lena Dunham to do so.

Birdy is a 14th-century tale told with a 21st-century attitude. It’s clever, cute, and charming. It’s also a bit of a whitewash of Medieval mores and conditions where carefree peasants engage with the privileged in mud fights and where lords of the manor willingly ‘auction’ their daughters off to the highest bidder. But as I say, don’t look too closely.

With Birdy, Dunham negotiates the perils of the natural world and turns it into frothy adolescent angst. It’s not unlike her earlier work, Tiny Furniture but with a broader net (and a bigger budget) cast into commercial fare.

The film is based on Karen Cushman’s popular novel of the same name. Sources call the novel a children’s book. It may well be, I haven’t read it, but in the hands of Dunham, Young Adult fiction might be a more appropriate category.

The film doesn’t shy from topics of menstruation, and sexuality, often for comic effect—all of which can be refreshing in Young Adult themed stories. The ‘C’ word might have dropped, but I’m not sure and I don’t want to check in case I’m right.

Bella Ramsey is Birdy.

Coming off Game of Thrones, Ramsey is barely given time for a costume change when taking on the title character, a 14-year-old girl whose privileged existence as a lady of the court is offset by a fixation on things decidedly unfeminine. If Birdy seems callous towards her nursemaids, tutors, and lesser-caste playmates, it comes from a place of naivety rather than willful ignorance.

“You’re lucky your father is dead,” she tells Perkins (Michael Woolfitt), a flatulent-proud sheepherder and one of Birdy’s best friends.

“I’m actually still upset by that, Birdy,” says Perkins wistfully, to no avail. It’s not mean; it’s just something Birdy is incapable of understanding. She is still a child.

Those living in Birdy’s fictional universe see her as an irascible (albeit endearing) nuisance, but in movie language, Birdy is a feminist out of time, and time is the device Dunham tinkers with most. Dunham faithfully recreates the era and then infuses it with an alt-mix soundtrack, presumably as a way of drawing the politics of then into the politics of now.

And there are ways in which the characters move—as in a brief scene of Birdy performing an impromptu dance—that seem expressively contemporary. Ramsey’s Birdy is feisty, outspoken, and rebellious. There is some adjustment before embracing Ramsey’s lively and somewhat predictable delivery, but eventually, Ramsey eases into a comfort zone. Her moments of silence (of which there are but a few) whisper thoughts of oppression and defiance through an expressionless stare.

Birdy’s feudal lifestyle is all fun and games until her father, Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott), decides that marrying her off—which he’s mildly afraid of—is the surest way out of debt. And so, a series of unsavory suitors start showing up at the dining table. This does not sit well with the spirited Birdy, who devises all sorts of schemes (primarily comedic) to send her suitors fleeing.

There are moments of high comedy in the film, some of which belong to the suitors. There is a cameo from Russell Brand, taking a break from his unsolicited anti-vax YouTube rants, as The Suitor from Kent. And Paul Kaye as Shaggy Beard, an obnoxious, crude Lord who openly leers at his 14-year-old prospective bride, turns in a performance that is as amusing as it is disturbing. The comedy is brought up near Monty Python levels when teamed with his manservant, Etienne (Jamie Demetriou).

The most consistently funny role goes to Lord Rollo as he steps out of character to persuade visiting Lords of the virtues of his daughter. Scott, as Rollo, is given the film’s most challenging balance act. We’re to like Rollo—and we do—despite his disparaging remarks about Birdy and his ease in putting his needs before his child’s.

But then again…don’t look at the film too closely.

Catherine Called Birdy. Directed by Lena Dunham. Starring Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott, Michael Woolfitt, Paul Kaye, Jamie Demetriou and Russell Brand. Now playing in selected theatres, airs on Prime starting October 7.