Young Woman and the Sea

Grade: B

I’m going to try not to spend the entire review just comparing/contrasting Young Woman and the Sea with Nyad, but it’s pretty inevitable. Both are based on true stories about a woman who swam a very long distance in the ocean, and the films had their release less than 7 months apart. Here I go. The main idea: both are perfectly fine movies. I still like Nyad a little bit better. While I thought it had a stronger body of a film, Young Woman and the Sea is the clear winner when it comes to the ending. I definitely “got something in my eyes.”

YW&tS is a PG-rated Disney movie (vs the PG-13 Netflix Original Nyad), so it’s more uplifting and family appropriate, without so much of the nitty gritty details about trials/tribulations/injuries in the water. It’s about Trudy Ederle, who swam the English Channel in 1926. 21 miles. She’s a tough cookie. The film begins in the 1910s, as we meet the Ederles, a family of five in New York City. Trudy is sick with the measles, and we find out in a cute Disney way that she’s beaten the disease. The doctor tells the family that it doesn’t look good. He will stay with her until the end, but “the next time I come down these stairs, she will be gone.” They wait. Finally, they hear someone descend the steps. It’s Trudy, and she’s all like “Hey, the doctor fell asleep in my room for some reason. His snoring woke me up. Got anything to eat? I’m starving.”

She develops an interest in swimming. Daisy Ridley, as the older Trudy, gives us her usual strong confident heroine. She competes in the Olympics, but doesn’t get the USA any golds. Instead, it’s a man who gets them, and all the glory in the Welcome Home celebration. After montages of winning medals and ribbons galore for the sport, and gaining some clout, she sets her sights on swimming the English Channel. She would be the first woman to do so.

The sets, costumes, and art direction are quite good. We get a palpable taste of what these locations looked like in the first quarter of the 1900s. The PG rating is pushed with a couple of bare-backside shots of a man who famously likes to swim “in the buff.” I hope he didn’t encounter any jellyfish. There’s a through-line about the men in high places who scoff at a woman competing at this level, and like to metaphorically swing it around (their power). We feel vindicated when she succeeds and puts them in their place.

Young Woman and the Sea lags a bit in its main part, and I weaved in and out of interest – but as I said, it sticks the landing with one of the most touching endings of the year. I think anybody would be affected by it, and thanks to its rating, more people can see this. I get the feeling that Annette Bening endured more in the water than Daisy Ridley does here, but Ridley is a great presence. She was memorable in last year’s The Marsh King’s Daughter, and most people know her as Rey from the 2015-19 Star Wars trilogy. I only saw the first and last of those, and most of it has long since passed through my colander of a brain. This one won’t.

Grade: B