'Catherine Called Birdy' movie review: Humorous but largely unconvincing period dramedy

Still from Catherine Called Birdy

Film: Catherine Called Birdy
Cast: Bella Ramsey, Billie Piper, Andrew Scott, Joe Alwyn, Dean-Charles Chapman, Paul Kaye, Ralph Ineson, Archie Renaux
Director: Lena Dunham
Rating: 2.5/5
Runtime: 108 min.

Karen Cushman's 1994 Newberry-winning novel gets an adaptation by Director Lena Dunham and it's not as faithful to the text as one would have hoped for - even though it manages to capture the book's diary format and humor with a voiceover narration.

The story, set in the 13th century Medieval England, is about a teenage girl, Lady Catherine aka Birdy (Bella Ramsey), the rebellious 14-year-old daughter of Sir Rollo Lord of Stonebridge (Andrew Scott), who tries to navigate life while avoiding the inevitable arranged marriage trap set in store by her father whose money problems appear to be growing out of proportion to his wealth. It's a piecemeal adaptation as this film is more of a card carrying, feminist leaning effort which skips much of the economic compulsions of those times. The narrative uses audience-pleasing, vulgar comedy as its mainstay while losing out on the thematic heft that the novel conveyed so beautifully.

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Trouble stalks the 14-year-old Birdy - who prefers playing in the mud with her best friend Perkin (Michael Woolfitt), when she starts her monthlies. She seeks the help of her nurse Morwenna (Lesley Sharp) to hide the fact from her father as long as possible - because she doesn't want to go through the same trauma her mother Lady Aislinn (Billie Piper) went through while having six stillbirth pregnancies. And that's quite tellingly brought out.

The problem with the narrative is largely due to the neglect of the true economic system in those days which favored the Royals and left everyone else in the hierarchy grasping at straws. Everyone from Lord to commoner, had to prop up the Royalty in economic terms, and this does not come through in the adaptation. Birdy appears to live in a Utopian world where the economic realities beyond her place just don't matter. It's only towards the end that Birdy realizes that getting out of the marriage situation is impossible because her fate is linked to the fate of the village.

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The ‘flautulent' humor is overplayed and some of the other attempts at sight gags don't even warrant a laugh. Bella Ramsey is vibrant and convincing as Birdy and Billie Piper, as her mother, makes her brief role count. The rest of the cast play on the side quite efficiently too. Dunham works in her own sensibility while changing some parts of the novel. She gives Birdy a choice and trusses-up some emotion with a Father-daughter reconciliation, while parts of her rebellion and the coming-of-age aspect gets muddied in the background. The end result is a post-modern outlook of medieval times and doesn't sit very well as a period film.