Lena Dunham’s Catherine Called Birdy is a feel-good coming-of-age film based in medieval England. Dunham is a master at writing strong yet quirky young white female characters born into affluence who yearn to live their lives with autonomy. Marriages in medieval times among the so-called high-born. They were arranged and girls got engaged to much older men as early as twelve-year-old.
At fourteen Birdy, (Bella Ramsey, Game of Thrones) is on the older end of the spectrum in this period. Birdy is clever, headstrong, and loves her freedom and independence. The film’s opening scene is simply lovely. A group of teenagers frolicking in the mud reminded me of kids today at music festivals. Dunham captures the wild abandon that Birdy has embraced for her entire lifestyle so far.
Birdy has endeared herself to the entire community with her sunshiny spirit, which made everyone in the village love this precocious girl. The plot thickens when Birdy gets her first period. Dunham does a lovely job introducing what women went through in the thirteenth century to the audience at the beginning when Morwenna (Lesley Sharp, Scott and Bailey), Birdy’s nanny, gives her a tutorial on how to make sanitary napkins and medicinal tea for the cramps.
This scene was one of my many favorites in this strikingly optimistic film. Birdy’s parents Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott, Fleabag) and Lady Aislinn (Billie Piper, Penny Dreadful) are head over heels in love and can’t keep their hands off one another, which means Lady Aislinn is continuously pregnant. Unfortunately, the last six pregnancies were miscarriages. Lord Rollo isn’t the best money manager, so he reluctantly decides to find a husband for his daughter so that the money from the dowry can be used to invest not only in the family but to save the community.
I was pleasantly surprised by Catherine Called Birdy and enjoyed the film much more than I thought I would. The story is based on an award-winning children’s book by the same name written by Karen Cushman and published in 1994. The story reminds me of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in some ways. A headstrong girl, in this case, challenges marriage even though she’s facing pressure from her father.
The film paints a nuanced picture of what it must have been like for women and girls in medieval times with a twenty-first-century flavor. The female characters are all vibrant and so much fun to watch. Sophie Okonedo stands out as the wealthy forty-eight-year-old widow Etherfritha Rose Splinter who ends up marrying an attractive man twenty years younger than she is.
Like in Starz’s The Serpent Queen, we see widowed women over forty living their best lives after their wealthy husbands die. In the book, Ethelfritha Rose is eccentric because she was struck by lightning, but that aspect of her character is not in the film, and I love that choice. The widow is one of the most interesting and vibrant characters in a film filled with people I truly liked watching.
I’m engrossed with HBO’s House of the Dragon, which is about the importance of women’s ability to bear children. Bloodlines were vital factors in building and maintaining power in monarchies. In the first episode of season one of House of the Dragon, Queen Aemma Targaryen (Sian Brooke, Sherlock) says to her daughter, “The child bed is a battlefield.” Because that show and this film are based on medieval cultures, they show how horrible and unfair feudal systems were.
Lord Rollo is kind and charming but has no business sense whatsoever. He married into a wealthy family, enjoying spending money more than making it. So, in reality, the family is in peril because of Rollo’s incompetence. At the same time, he is a loving father and husband with ethics and values.
The characters all have the right amount of texture, flavor, and messiness to make this film engaging and believable. I found myself considering how truly backward the system was and how the people living in that system knew it was messed up but still found ways to find love and connect to joy.
I love British TV and film, and this film was filled with actors from some of the best shows of the decade. Several actors from Game of Thrones and Fleabag head up this super-talented cast. The women in this film were outspoken, and I was here for it. The petty arguments between eighty-year-old Lord Gideon Sidebottom (David Bradley, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and his twenty-five-year-old wife Lady Berenice Sidebottom (Mimi Ndiweni, The Witcher) were hilarious.
She was so tired of that old man and wasn’t afraid to put him in his place at any opportunity. Having Lord Gideon always in his armor was a clever way to reflect that character’s delusional vanity. Another Game of Thrones alum Paul Kayne plays Sir John Henry Burgaw, aka Shaggy Beard, one of Birdy’s middle-aged suitors. Kayne looks like he had a blast playing this role, and this actor is so much fun to watch.
Placed in a world where child brides and incest were the norms, all in all, Catherine Called Birdy is not a conventional film. Yet, it is a celebration of feminism and the unbreakable spirit of girls. The writers give Birdy’s parents, who are in a stable loving relationship, as an example of what to strive for in her pursuit of happiness within a deeply flawed system.
I loved that Birdie knew what she wanted and had no problem articulating and taking steps to advocate for her needs. At the same time, Birdy was flawed. She was selfish and immature. Watching this character’s evolution was engaging and believable. The entire energy of this film was positive. When it ended, I wanted more. It’s always refreshing when parents of teenagers are written to be fully fleshed out and intelligent.
Birdie’s parents are madly in love and still have space to love their children and tenants. Lord Rollo has a responsibility to the peasants who work his fields and pay rent to live on his property. He doesn’t want to sell his daughter off into marriage, but due to his mistakes, he has to. The entire community’s survival depends on receiving the dowry.
Catherine Called Birdy is an entertaining romp through medieval England that will make you laugh, think and celebrate the wisdom, tenacity, and effervescent joy most girls just have. This made me think about what it looks like to live happy and big, beyond systems designed to keep us small.
Catherine Called Birdy is now streaming on Prime Video.
