“Seems like a nice day for a swim.”
Walt Disney Studios has struggled of late. It’s been a while since they’ve had much of a hit, and that includes their Marvel and Pixar components. In the years just before the pandemic the studio was outperforming anyone in the industry. One Disney executive once said that actually printing money would be less profitable than the billions the studio was raking in. But something changed around the pandemic, and it had little to do with a virus. The studio started to flex its muscles in the political arena, and those elements started to dominate the on-screen product. It doesn’t really matter if one agrees with them or not. I think it’s tricky when a part of the entertainment industry starts to get too involved with a particular social ideology. Just ask the Dixie Chicks. The who? That’s my point. It’s cost the studio a considerable sum and an over 50% plunge in their stock value over three years or so. Why would you alienate half of the prospective audience? Forget politics. It’s just not good business. So this was the backdrop in which I attended our screening of Young Woman Of The Sea. If ever there was a film that looked to really pile on, that sure sounded like the title to me. To my surprise, the film appears to avoid all of that and ends up being the best Disney film I’ve seen in a few years.
Trudy Ederle is played by Daisy Ridley. We first meet her in 1914 when she is suffering from the measles. This was a time when the disease was far more serious and often fatal. Her attending doctor had pretty much written her off, informing the family that the next time he came down the stairs to see them, it would all be over, and Trudy would be gone. It’s no spoiler to tell you that it’s Trudy herself who descends the stairs. Of course she does. Otherwise there really isn’t much of a movie here. It so happens that girls were not expected to learn how to swim. It was some kind of a social taboo that I was unaware existed. Certainly I was aware that many paths were unfairly unavailable to women at that time. Who knew simply swimming was one of them? Such was the case. When a ferry boat catches fire, over 100 women died because they wouldn’t flee the sinking ship because they did not know how to swim. As far as Trudy’s mother was concerned, that was justification on its face. Her daughters would learn to swim, and learn they did. Both became quite good at the sport, and before long they were competing with each other, and as good as sister Meg (Cobham-Hervey) might be, it is Trudy who is asked to compete at The Olympics in Paris. It doesn’t go her way, but she does work her way into a modest bit of renown in the sport.
One day she watches a newsreel that covers several attempts by men to swim across the treacherous English Channel. There’s even a reward offered, and she decides she was going to make the attempt that caused the death of several men before her. What she didn’t count on was that even her coach wasn’t very happy about a woman accomplishing such a feat, and between the opposition to her and the media circus it all creates, she falls short. But before she can return, she meets Bill Burgess, played by Stephen Graham. He believes in her and convinces her to skip the trip home and make another attempt. This time her father and sister join to support her, and with these factors behind her, she completes the journey. Again, no spoiler here. It would hardly be newsworthy to cover the journey of someone who never succeeded in the attempt.
It’s a true-to-life story that is, unfortunately, somewhat lost to history. While the film appears to attempt a money grab from last year’s award contender Nyad, it actually tells a unique story of its own. Of course, there are elements in common. I’m not sure you can tell these two stories without acknowledging that some of the same elements would be in play. The encounters both women had with jellyfish certainly stand out as one example. But this film is far more a character study and tells a much more complete story about the central figure. Both are somewhat period films, but this one tells a much older story. While Nyad covers the 70’s and 80’s, this story primarily takes place in the 1920’s and begins a decade earlier. I think that actually gives this film a better chance of being more interesting throughout. As much as I liked Nyad, over half of the film covers her attempts to swim between Cuba and Miami. The several attempts along with the longer journey just takes more time to tell. With Young Woman Of The Sea there are only two attempts, and the distance is less than half that of Nyad. This gives the filmmakers the opportunity to tell a far more rounded and visually interesting story. They did just that. Finally, because that first film covered an era within my own lifetime, there was far more familiarity with the events. This one I knew nothing about going in, so that it had a head start at holding my interest and attention.
The cinematography is pretty impressive and truly immerses you in this place and time. When I used the term media circus earlier, it was press members on a “chaser” boat throwing their story updates to the main ship through literally messages in bottles so they can be wired to their papers and radio stations. We get a great look at this earlier radio world when Trudy’s mother storms into the NBC radio studios because she wasn’t getting fast enough updates on Trudy’s progress. It’s actually a nice moment, and all of these moments away from the actual swim only serve to build a more entertaining film and make those swim moments mean so much more when we are there. And make no mistake. We spend plenty of time out in the water with Trudy. But the family element and the character building enhance all that you see and hear.
The character building here is what director Joachim Ronning does best here. This was a great opportunity for Ridley to step out of her Star Wars character and show she can do more than Rey offered her in that franchise. She’s about to return to the role, but here’s a chance to get to see her use more of her acting chops, and she’s quite good. Stephen Graham is also quite compelling here. You might remember him best as Al Capone on Boardwalk Empire, a show I’m currently revisiting. Here he gets to use his real British voice and has a much less polished physical character to work with. He’s also quite convincing, and in the relatively short time he’s actually on-screen with Ridley, they have a strong chemistry that sells the second effort quite nicely. He’s a charismatic actor/character, and you understand how she was so quickly and easily convinced to literally jump ship for home and try again. The two of them carry the emotional weight of the film. The family members are also nicely fleshed out here. There’s nice chemistry also with sister Meg and actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey. Her mother Gertrude is played by Jeanette Hain, who gives Trudy that likely rare strong female role model as demonstrated when Mom marches into that radio studio and starts giving orders. Her father, Henry, is this wonderful newly minted immigrant played by Kim Bodnia, and he provides the film’s charm. Together they pull it off and find a way to make this film about things like female empowerment by letting the characters show us rather than try to hit us over the head until we’re too senseless to get it, let alone be at all entertained.
If there’s a flaw in the film, it’s the overuse of the old standard song Ain’t We Got Fun. It’s kind of an anthem of sorts, and I get why it plays such a dominant part, but it gave me flashbacks of getting stuck at Disney World in the It’s A Small World Ride. Sidebar: as much as I hate that song, it should be noted that Richard Sherman of the famous songwriting siblings the Sherman Brothers passed this last week at 95. The brothers wrote most of the iconic Disney songs of the 60’s, 70’s and beyond, including … yes … It’s A Small World.
It’s a pretty good tale. How accurate is the film? I don’t know. It’s an informative and entertaining film. That much I do know. “Ain’t we got fun?”
