Flip through the pages of 13th-century manuscripts and you might think that the Middle Ages were more plagued with serpentine dragons and murderous bunnies than capricious tween girls. The stories of the young women were not recorded—certainly not in their own hands, due to the low literacy rate and the high cost of paper—to later generations, who described medieval adolescents as humble and unassuming. To fill that silence with screams, headstrong comedy Catherine Cold, written for the screen and directed by Lena Dunham.・Birdie” will appear.
Played enthusiastically by Bella Ramsey, Birdie rushes into the frame with bared teeth and tossing a mud pie. Her 14-year-old daughter of a bankrupt lord (Andrew Scott) and his often bedridden wife (Billy Piper), Birdie is capricious, brusque, and obsessed with just about everyone and every person on her property. I am very annoyed by things. She records her own frustrations in her diary, which quotes riffs from her 1994 Newbery Award-winning Karen Cushman children’s novel. The film drops Cushman’s unromantic plague theme (“I picked 29 fleas today,” writes her birdie) in favor of a girl who invents a curse (“Bones in my body!”). and her campaign to abandon her father’s intentions to preserve his estate. Marrying his only surviving daughter to a flatulent creep, whom she names Shaggy Beard (Paul Kay).
As you can see here, the husband is either too old (81!), too young (9!), or too selfish. As if foreshadowing Lord Byron’s fashion sense six centuries earlier. No wonder she would rather suffer the grisly tortures of a saint than live as a forsaken wife.
Dunham set out to liven up life in 1290. It’s almost as if Birdie is rocking “Euphoria” glitter eyes her shadow instead of drawstrings her pants. At times, the film overstates its modern relevance. It is doubtful that his teenager in the Middle Ages would be able to confide in being gay just by appearing to know. (You don’t have to play Elastica’s “Connection” on something that sounds like a lute.) But Dunham succeeded in convincing the audience that coming-of-age ceremonies in the so-called Simple Age were equally tumultuous. and other female characters throughout her film carefully capture their own moments of contentment—a glimpse of the joy of realizing that the best things happen in the margins of medieval stories.
Catherine called Birdie
Rated PG-13 for adult allusions. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. at the theater.