Young Woman and the Sea tells the story of Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle, a real person from the early 20th century who was a champion swimmer and the first woman to swim the English Channel. This film feels like a throwback to the biopics of athletes that Disney particularly excels at since they made Cool Runnings in the 90s. Daisy Ridley portrays Trudy, a woman who overcomes measles as a child to become this stellar athlete, and this movie does amazingly in making it an ultimate underdog story. The film rightly focuses on her challenges for Gertrude and women in general in engaging in athletics. Ridley uses all her earnest charm, while the director Joachim Rønning does well by focusing on the actors’ faces. When seeing the determination in Ridley’s eyes, you believe she’s this woman pushing every boundary to have a chance to compete. The film sets up her older sister Meg, Trudy’s hero and inspiration. Tilda Cobham-Hervey plays Meg, a warm and robust performance that the audience can easily feel. Her arc works as a good parallel as society is able to push her into accepting a life that doesn’t fulfill her as it should. This adds to the connection and love you see between the sisters.
Kim Bodnia plays Henry, their German immigrant father who supports the family in New York with a Butcher shop. He’s stubborn and is the clearest example of what Trudy and Meg must overcome concerning male opinions of what a woman can and should do. In the film, he evolves through his support of Gertrude, but it takes time and the forceful hand of his wife, Gertrude, who refuses to let anything limit her daughters, even their father. Jeanette Hain plays Gertrude as this wise, all-knowing, supportive, and loving mother and as a woman who doesn’t want her children to have the regrets she has about what was put upon her in her youth. Sian Clifford plays Charlotte, the head of the Women’s Swimming Association and Trudy’s central coach, but is held back by the patriarchal systems, which will not allow her to continue once Trudy starts gaining entry to the athletic institutions. Clifford plays her as a perfect and tough iconic New York lady. She plays the character in what you would expect from a coach in a movie like this, completely believing in Trudy and Meg but not being soft on her one bit. Trudy ends up working hard just to get into the pool, and if you’ve seen any Shonen anime, you know what that means – Trudy ends up stronger than everyone else.
Besides Trudy’s father, the film has two very different male characters interacting with Trudy. The first is Jabez Wolffe, played by Christopher Eccleston (who I still call Doctor Who), a Scottish swimmer who constantly sabotages her efforts as his ego can’t deal with her success in light of his many failures. The other is Bill Burgess, played by a wonderfully eclectic Stephen Graham, who, as a swimmer, was the second person ever to swim the Channel. He became a supportive coach as he teamed with her family to help her achieve her goal. I like how the film clearly shows examples of positive masculinity and very toxic ones. Now, the film takes liberties in the story by compressing things and moving figures around, but it’s a dramatic film and an academic documentary. This is the type of film I’ve longed loved and something I sadly think won’t have a place in the theaters as it has in the past. I loved how this film looked, thanks to Oscar Faura’s cinematography and Amelia Warner’s score, which gave this film such a grand scale at the times it needed it. The film was full of actors I’ve seen in many projects, and I love seeing them give great performances. Yet I was sad by the end, not because of what the film did but because I feel people won’t see this film in theaters, and while I guess it’s okay to watch at home, it won’t have that scale. Sorry, you can’t afford a TV to match it; even an eighty-five-inch set isn’t enough. But to get off my soapbox, Young Woman and the Sea is a fantastic, inspiring film seeing women empowered and overcoming the patriarchy by shattering ceilings. It’s also great to see Daisy Ridley show off her talent in a film that does a great job of platforming it.
Score: B+
