Mark Reviews Movies: CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY

Catherine Called Birdy, Amazon Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 22, 2022

The title character of Catherine Called Birdy is ahead of her time but very much of her age. She's the 14-year-old Catherine (Bella Ramsey), the child of a demanding, spend-happy lord and an understanding lady, but this girl has no care or patience for things like nice dresses and the aristocratic title into she was born or matters such as having good manners and maintaining the air of a proper young woman. Catherine would rather roll around in and throw mud, spend time with the kids of the common folk over whom her father literally lords, and have a life decided by and lived on her own terms.

That's the setup of writer/director Lena Dunham's adaptation of Karen Cushman's 1994 children's book, set in the final decade of the 13th century but told with a keen, winking perspective of modern-day understandings of gender, class, and hygienic concerns. It's a comedy, obviously, in that Dunham is laughing at how the backwards this story's world is compared to our own.

It's more than a one-note joke, though, because the film's characters, particularly our plucky protagonist, realize how restricting this time and place are for just about everyone—unless the people in question are wealthy men. Catherine, the little rebel, is going to make sure that everyone, especially those wealthy men, understands that reality as well as she does.

Ramsey, a young actor who has been capable of stealing scenes from much older and/or more experienced actors for years now (Most will recognize her as the young, no-nonsense leader of one of the many houses on "Game of Thrones"), gets a starring role, and she's a delightfully charming, cheeky, and cunning hoot in the role. Here, her character is up against the likes of Catherine's father Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott), a man who has recklessly spent his way into debt (A quick flashback has him excited to be receiving a tiger, which is an extravagantly misguided use of money—even before the big cat arrives as a carcass in the back of carriage), and various other men of means.

Because her dad has emptied the family coffers, his only option to obtain some more income is to find a suitable—read: rich in gold, silver, or some other goods of trade—husband for his one and only daughter. Yes, she's only 14 and only just began her monthly bleeding, as her nursemaid Morwenna (Lesley Sharp) more or less puts it in variously euphemistic terms, and such is only part of the terrible but everyday treatment of girls and women circa 1290 England.

Our protagonist doesn't like to be called by her Christian name, preferring "Birdy." She hates the notion of behaving and being seen as a lady, and she definitely despises the notion that, one day, her entire life be defined by her role as a wife to some inevitably boorish husband. Any man who would marry for a title would have to be that way. As evidence of that, Catherine has her father, whom she sees as a foppish but demanding tyrant, and her older brother Robert (Dean-Charles Chapman), whom she sees as just a bore.

Dunham is serious about this to a necessary extent, of course, but she never loses sight that this is, first and foremost, a comedy. Catherine's suitors are eccentric fools, and at least Catherine isn't in the awkward position of her best friend Aelis (Isis Hainsworth). She loses a chance to marry Catherine's uncle George (Joe Alwyn) because she ends up betrothed to a 9-year-old boy who's far more interested in a turnip-headed doll than the idea of a wife.

By the way, the brief romance between Aelis and the uncle, the brother of Catherine's mother Lady Aislinn (Billie Piper), leads to a quarrel between the friends. After all, Catherine has a star-crossed crush on George, wishing that he were a more socially acceptable match—like, say, a first cousin. Dunham and the whole cast, especially Ramsey, are quite skilled at giving us these pointed jokes about the story's contemporary society but treating them with such normalcy that it takes a second or two for the gag to register. It's sneaky in the way we expect of a subversive satire such as this (One of Catherine's life goals, beyond traveling the world and having adventures, is to witness a public hanging—just to hint at a later point about how her station in life has made her a self-centered hypocrite in some ways).

There's not much to the story, which has Catherine meeting and scaring away various suitors until she's confronted with one with no apparent standards of decency or anything, really (Paul Kaye plays "Shaggy Beard," the most disgusting, despicable, and, unfortunately, eligible bachelor, who responds to the girl's attempts to dissuade him by crying and oinking with, unfortunately, excitement), but that's hardly the point. It's the humor, to be sure, and the underlying commentary about the tale's contemporary world.

Beneath all of that, though, is a collection of fun and/or fascinating characters, played by a game cast. Some highlights include Sophie Okonedo as Ethelfritha, a woman Catherine should hate because of whom she marries but can't help but admire, and Scott, who certainly looks like that ineffectual despot at a glance but subtly reveals a depth of compassion beneath that surface. There's an especially affecting scene between Rollo and Aislinn at a time of potential crisis, in which Catherine witnesses how a real husband should look and behave.

Catherine Called Birdy is a smart and incisive comedy about the cruelty and absurdities of the past. It's also a warm-hearted and encouraging one, which is a pleasant, surprising bonus.

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