Lady Bird (2017) is a coming-of-age dramedy written and directed by Greta Gerwig. The full-length film focuses on the eponymous teenager (Saoirse Ronan), a senior at a Sacramento high school in 2002, going through her last year at home before she moves to the East Coast for college. The film focuses on many elements — primarily the relationship between Lady Bird and her mother (Laurie Metcalf) — including a brief romance with a fellow boy in the drama department, Danny O’Neil (Lucas Hedges). Danny will be the primary focus of this entry.
Something Lady Bird does well is to establish Danny’s attraction to the title character throughout most of the film. He is the initiator in the attraction — he’s the one who makes a pass at Lady, he’s the one who pulls her in closer for a dance, he’s the one who goes in for the first kiss. So when later, Lady Bird discovers Danny making out with a boy in the bathroom at a cast party, we thought it would be treated gently since Lady Bird likes to think of herself as a sophisticate.
Unfortunately, the title character goes into binary thinking and labels him as gay, which is disappointing. This can perhaps be attributed to the fact that it’s the early 2000s, Danny’s Catholic upbringing, the word “bi” not being used frequently yet, and — mostly — that Lady Bird is a teen with dramatic, romantic, black-and-white thinking, which is very disappointing. The film also fails to use the term “bi” at any point, which compounds the disappointment and the frustration.
Overall, while the movie is charming in pretty much every other way, Lady Bird ultimately misses a golden opportunity to have some lovely and lilting male bi representation in the film. It is a shame — the setup is beautiful, but it messes up the endgame.