I have a confession to make. I have spent the better part of a week trying to think about how to approach a review for the biographical drama Young Woman and the Sea. It’s a bit of an odd duck: a movie that’s too bland to make much of an impression, but also too competent and well done to be outright forgettable or unlikeable. There’s a considerable amount of effort and care that has been put into making Young Woman and the Sea, and all of that time and finesse can be seen on screen. And yet it’s also exactly the kind of film one expects from this genre without deviation, meaning it lays the manipulation on rather thick, there’s no subtlety, and the bombastic score is constantly imposing on the viewer and telling them how to feel at every moment. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Young Woman and the Sea isn’t a bad movie, but nothing I would willingly watch again.
Young Woman and the Sea is the fictionalized story of long distance swimmer Trudy Ederle, played by Daisy Ridley. As a child, Trudy nearly died of measles, and her survival was somewhat of a miracle. After a massive ferry disaster took the lives of hundreds of immigrants who couldn’t swim, Trudy’s mother (Jeanette Hain) insists her daughters learn how to swim. Trudy’s traditionalist father (Kim Bodina) is staunchly against the idea because – like many at the time – the idea of women competing in athletics sounds preposterous to him. On top of that, Trudy’s previous brush with death left her with an inner ear condition that could make swimming dangerous to her hearing. Eventually mom wins out and Trudy and her sister, Meg (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), become standouts in the pool with the help of their female coach, Charlotte Epstein (Sian Clifford). Although Meg initially impresses, Trudy’s consistently hard work makes the younger sister a major star. She’s courted for the first ever U.S. women’s Olympic swim team, which turns out to be a mismanaged, sexist debacle, but in 1926 – fearing the possibility of an arranged loveless marriage and a dead-end life – Trudy sets out to become the first woman to swim the English Channel.
Young Woman and the Sea is a plucky underdog story in the established Disney tradition, where an underestimated person perseveres in the face of overwhelming cultural and physical odds. There’s not much being mined from Ederle’s story that hasn’t been done before in the likes of Iron Will, Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken, Secretariat, and even in more comedically minded projects like Cool Runnings and The Mighty Ducks. Despite its period movie trappings and strong female viewpoint, Young Woman and the Sea is a formulaic picture through and through; a biopic where nothing is ever in doubt because there wouldn’t be much of a movie if Ederle failed at everything she ever attempted.
In that respect, the film is always operating as a deficit. The ending and a lot of the steps to get there are never in doubt because most of the audience going into the film knows precisely where it’s heading. The script from veteran writer Jeff Nathanson (Rush Hour 2, Catch Me If You Can, the re-make of The Lion King) makes sure to include enough impassioned speeches and easily telegraphed prejudices to make sure the whole thing goes down as breezily and melodramatically as possible, but never to a point of overexertion. Even the film’s biggest villain – Christopher Eccleston as Trudy’s mandated, contemptuous, and sneeringly sexist and jealous Olympic coach – is an archetype that’s been softened a bit to avoid stepping too far into self parody. There’s a calculation to Young Woman and the Sea that shows some degree of self-awareness. It actively lends itself to inspirational movie cliches, but knows precisely how far it can take them without making the viewer roll their eyes.
Norwegian director Joachim Rønning is a solid choice for directing such material, having shown a knack for making films set largely on the open water in the past (Kon-Tiki, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales). Rønning paints a pretty picture, but his visuals are sometimes marred by pacing problems (which aren’t helped by some occasionally awkward and abrupt edits) and a sound mix that probably would’ve sounded a lot better in a theatre than it does on a home system. Whether it’s staging heartfelt conversations in the middle of the pouring rain or offering up solidly constructed montages of Trudy’s many successes along the path of her career, Rønning knows exactly what’s needed from him behind the camera.
Ridley does her part exceptionally well in the lead, balancing the physically demanding nature of her role with well honed senses of defiance and vulnerability. Ridley’s A-game here is essential to the film’s success because without her Young Woman and the Sea would be even emptier than it already is on paper. It’s a good example of how a perfectly cast and capable lead can turn something that’s resoundingly mediocre into a consistently watchable film. She has wonderful chemistry alongside the performers tasked with playing Trudy’s family members – especially Hervey’s supportive sister – and scenes where she learns some hard truths about distance swimming from Stephen Graham’s eccentric athletic veteran are equally captivating.
But as I sit here and remember all the things that happened in Young Woman and the Sea, I can’t say that I feel any lasting effects from the film. It pressed emotional buttons that have been smashed upon by so many other similarly minded films in the same exact ways that the experience of watching it was passive and numbing. It’s not that I feel cynical about this sort of thing, but rather that Young Woman and the Sea is a bit like following a straight line to a goal. You get there in the end, but there’s no challenge for the viewer, despite all the drama on screen. I can mildly recommend it, but not as much more than a decent way to kill a rainy weekend afternoon. It’s far from awful, but maybe if it was worse there would be more to remember about it.
Young Woman and the Sea is now streaming on Disney+.
