Catherine Called Birdy film review — Bella Ramsey steals the show in Lena Dunham’s historical romp

Lena Dunham, creator and star of the 2012-17 HBO series Girls, is a divisive figure for all kinds of reasons. But while people may object to her personal style, her fudging of the lines between autobiography and fiction, her white privilege and more, the fact that she has real talent as a maker of TV and film is much less in dispute. The evidence is there in Girls, which she shaped as star, showrunner, key writer and sometime director, but also in her early features Creative Nonfiction (2009) and Tiny Furniture (2010). Reports from Sundance Film Festival earlier this year suggested that her down-and-dirty comedy Sharp Stick is both problematic and disappointing, but now comes the firework bang of pure joy that is Catherine Called Birdy.

It’s a more mainstream work than Girls or Dunham’s previous features. Like the acclaimed 1994 book by Karen Cushman on which it is based, the film centres around a 14-year-old protagonist living in 13th-century England, and is aimed more at fans of Young Adult fiction than the kinds of actual young adults found in Girls. The challenge of adapting another writer’s work and the raised stakes of a higher budget may have curbed some of Dunham’s more provocative instincts. But with a story that touches on menstruation, a young woman’s first exposure to sex, her incestuous desire for her uncle, the threat of sexual abuse and harrowing scenes of childbirth, it still meshes with Dunham’s usual preoccupation with the sticky bodily facts of being female.

That might make it sound like a YA version of Game of Thrones-spin-off House of the Dragon, but without the dragons or, thankfully, the dour self-seriousness. It does have Thrones’ breakout star Bella Ramsey (who played a tiny but fierce clan head) in the lead role of Birdy, an irrepressible imp who prefers playing in mud to learning to be a lady. This greatly annoys her father, Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott), who needs to marry her off quickly to bolster his estate’s dwindling finances. Birdy’s permanently pregnant mother Aislinn (Billie Piper) and nurse Morwenna (Lesley Sharp) are quietly on her side but are powerless to avert the onset of adulthood. In her desperation, Birdy conspires to sabotage every introduction her father arranges with either histrionics, blackened teeth or plain rudeness.

Dunham and her casting directors have always had a great eye for new talent, and that’s as true again here, with such discoveries as Rita Bernard-Shaw as snorty-laughed maid Meg, Michael Woolfitt as goatherd Perkin and others, while the rest of the roles are filled out with established names on cracking form, including Sophie Okonedo as a saucy aunt by marriage and Paul Kaye as a loathsome suitor. But it’s Ramsay who owns or steals every scene, a petite combustible package bursting with fury, pleasure and potential. It may go down as one of the all-time great teen performances.

The film taps into that youthfulness as Dunham and her team create a medieval world, encapsulated in a sleepy corner of Lincolnshire, that feels fresh, contemporary and effortlessly cool, with hip cover versions of pop songs and costumes that channel boho-boutique chic.

★★★★☆

In UK and US cinemas from September 23 and on Amazon Prime Video from October 7