‘Catherine Called Birdy’ Review: A Delight

In her second directorial effort this year, Lena Dunham forgoes the adult themes of Sharp Stick to tell a more traditional coming-of-age story about a headstrong teenage girl living in medieval times. A significant departure from most of her previous work, the playfully broad Catherine Called Birdy, premiering at the Toronto Film Festival, is a sincere effort at the sort of classic young adult films that populated the 90s and early 2000s. Young-adult storytelling has always been more than brooding love triangles and devastating wars, but in a post-Hunger Games world it’s easy to forget the smaller, more personal stories. Luckily, Dunham has no trouble remembering Karen Cushman’s 1994 novel on which this film is based, capturing the book’s humorous diary format with cheeky voiceover narration.

In the early 1200s, Lady Catherine (Bella Ramsey) is a girl on the cusp of womanhood. This is great news for her father Lord Rollo (Fleabag‘s Andrew Scott), who is eager to marry his daughter off to secure the family’s finances. Though they are people of means, Rollo is deeply in debt, which he blames on his wife Lady Aislinn (Billie Piper) for her expensive tastes. But Catherine, nicknamed Birdy, has no interest in getting married, choosing instead to spend her days holding on to childhood with her peasant friend Perkin (Michael Woolfitt) and servant girl Meg (Rita Bernard-Shaw).