In the movie “Young Woman and the Sea,” Daisy Ridley engages in a duel not only with the jellyfish but also with the patriarchy.
Trudy Ederle was the first woman to swim across the English Channel, which Ridley plays in this captivating biographical drama. Ederle achieved this success in 1926, almost a century before the open water swimming victory seen in the Oscar-nominated film “Nyad” that came out in 2022. Comparisons are unavoidable despite the fact. For one thing, sports nutrition handled has changed ever since. Nobody was lowering down nets loaded with fried chicken and tea to Diana Nyad as she made the intolerable trek of 100 miles from Cuba to Florida.
That is one of the most engaging yet maddening aspects of Rønning’s film based on Stout’s book: How come the sports authorities never seem to get what Ederle or any other woman athlete for that matter need in order to train, compete and succeed. And even more concerning, they simply don’t care. In reality, they are rather abusive, even towards Olympians. Yet, being women, we are ingenious, and Ederle follows through on all her ideas.
This is Ridley’s world, and in her own words, she wishes others to see it. Her immense confidence coupled with her quick wit allows her to rise above doubts cast upon her by others. This battle is the same fierce spark seen in Ridley as Rey in the last three “star wars” movies.
Young Woman and Sea is a film that I believe many young women and other women who play sports should watch. But I think its themes of risk and perseverance would speak to any person who ever chased after a goal. Rønning hits the sweet spot here: He’s gone and created a moving sports movie that restructures the mold without straying into cliché.
Using Ederle’s sunshine-soaked perspective, the Norwegian director shifts our viewpoint as she barrels through waves and reveals the subsequent underwater vista. Her journey through a jellyfish-infested sea is particularly distressing, as is her isolation in the ocher shallows of Dover when she is forced to go it alone after dark.
Award-winning Oscar Faura whose previous credits include “The Impossible,” and “The Imitation Game” provides a strong sense of place from Ederle’s working class childhood to the sun-kissed sprawling of English Channel.
But when we first meet Ederle, she is a frail child of Manhattan who is living through the agonizing illness of measles in the year 1914. She is portrayed by Olive Abercrombie as a vibrant adolescent who overcame this injustice to realize her childhood aspiration of becoming a swimmer, which in her father’s conservative German immigrant household (played by Kim Bodnia) is always considered inappropriate. Ridley is brought in as a teenager and Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Helen Reddy in the biopic “I Am Woman”) portrays Trudy’s elder sister Meg (They are beautifully cast as sisters there is great chemistry around them but both actresses appear too old to play characters this age and that is somewhat distracting in the beginning). Their elegant and impulsive mother (Jeanette Hain) takes it for granted that both her daughters are to be swimmers which justifies the need for training sequences in the cramped indoor swimming pool, under the watchful eye of the amusing but matter-of-fact Lottie Epstein (Sian Clifford).
The script penned by veteran writer Jeff Nathanson whose past works include “Catch Me If You Can,” “The Terminal” does a nice job of chronicling the seemingly boring life of Trudy’s family and her quest for success as an athlete–the gap between the expectations of ‘it is appropriate to be a butcher’s daughter and of her own aspirations.’
She knows perfectly well what the future of her life looks like: she has a nice German boy waiting for her as an arranged husband, she has a neighborhood that she will most probably never leave, and she simply refuses to follow any of it. It’s important to note, though, the way Dean Goossen, one of the nswim’s cardiopulmonary managers, presents himself at a hotel bar in France’s picturesque Boulogne sur Mer, the place from which she would start her 21-mile swim, makes it seem as if she will be perfectly alright even before she goes into the water. Stephen Graham and Alexander Karim among the many tough drinkers in the area who play prominent parts as the opponents that join forces when they both see the same craziness in her.
At least, this is what the film is about: the trip instead of the destination. First, there was fun. Then, once more, there was fun and excitement, which was followed by bad thrills. The energizing atmosphere of joy is however pleasing to the masses without being cheesy. “Young Woman and the Sea” does not change anything in this topic but does not let us loose attention for every labour stroke.
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