Inspirational sports movies don’t come much better than this one.
Norwegian director Joachim Rønning has swum similar fact-based waters before, with 2012’s rugged and equally compelling Kon-Tiki. But this new film has a sparkling buoyance courtesy of its strongest asset: an effervescent and thoroughly persuasive performance by star Daisy Ridley. She’s radiant.
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| Dinners in the Eberle household often are a boisterous affair: from left, Henry Jr. (Ethan Rouse), Henry (Kim Bodnia), Gertrude (Jeanette Hain), Trudy (Daisy Ridley) and Meg (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). |
(In a recent article for the London Daily Telegraph, journalist Simon Briggs cheekily compares her to champion racehorse Seabiscuit, who in the late 1930s was just as celebrated as Ederle had been in the 1920s ... but similarly vanished from the historical record until being profiled in Laura Hillenbrand’s sensational 1999 best-seller, which in turn prompted a 2003 film.)
Rønning’s film opens in 1910, in a German neighborhood in Manhattan, New York. Five-year-old Trudy (Olive Abercrombie) unexpectedly survives a bout with measles: an illness that coincides with the PS General Slocum steamboat tragedy, which caught fire and sank in the East River, killing 1,021 people. Most were women and children, who remained on the boat because they couldn’t swim, and were terrified of the water.
(This steamboat disaster actually occurred in June 1904, which doesn’t quite fit Nathanson’s timeline ... but it serves a substantial dramatic purpose.)
Galvanized by the thought of so many needless deaths, Trudy’s severe yet caring mother, Gertrude (a warm and richly nuanced performance by Jeanette Hain), resolves that her children will learn how to swim. All of her children, which includes Trudy’s older sister Meg (Lilly Aspell), at a time when the mere thought of women — of any age — in the water, was considered laughable and/or scandalous.
This view is shared by the girls’ stubborn father, Henry (Kim Bodnia), a butcher with old-country sensibilities and a firm believer in rules, who abjectly refuses this plan. Trudy’s hilarious ploy to wear him down involves a popular period foxtrot song that becomes a mantra throughout this film (and an ear-worm that I’ve yet to shake, days later).
Once Henry relents, Meg and Trudy take to the Coney Island ocean waters like porpoises ... despite doing nothing beyond a clumsy dog-paddle, and being encumbered by heavy woolen “bathing costumes” that cover them from neck to toe, and look more like winter sleepwear. Trudy doesn’t use her legs at all, and merely drags them behind her.
That latter issue becomes a liability when Gertrude tries to enroll both girls into the nascent Women’s Swimming Association, an “underground” (basement!) class run by no-nonsense coach Charlotte “Eppy” Epstein (Sian Clifford). She teaches her young students the 28-beats-per-minute American crawl, which flies in the face of what male coaches insist is the only “proper” style women should employ: the much slower breast stroke.
Delighted by Meg but initially unwilling to accept Trudy, Eppy relents only after setting punishing ground rules ... but this is a girl who survived measles. Being told “she can’t” only hardens Trudy’s resolve.
Clifford plays Eppy as initially tougher and less forgiving than the girls’ father ... but the woman comes around when she recognizes that Trudy has determination, strength and — most important — endurance.
Ridley takes over the part during this chapter, just as Tilda Cobham-Hervey assumes Meg’s role. The sisters are staunch best friends and loyal mutual supporters; the dynamic between the two actresses is persuasively loving and warm.
This obviously wouldn’t be a noteworthy story unless Trudy begins to shine ... which she does, and quite spectacularly. Along the way, though, she and Eppy are repeatedly confronted by sexism, misogyny and “public decorum.” (Some things never change, right?)
Thanks to a movie theater newsreel, Trudy becomes obsessed by the notion of swimming the English Channel: a feat which — at this point in time — had been accomplished successfully by only four men.
Many others had died trying.
The other key figures in Trudy’s rising career include James Sullivan (Glenn Fleshler), chair of the American Olympic Committee; Scottish Olympic women’s swimming team coach Jabez Wolffe (Christopher Eccleston); and eccentric British swimmer Bill Burgess (Stephen Graham), the second man to successfully cross the channel.
At first Fleshler’s Sullivan is patronizing, but he’s quick to sense an opportunity for good publicity. The means by which Trudy wins his respect is pure Hollywood artifice ... but it makes for an exciting sequence with a crowd-pleasing payoff.
Graham is a total hoot as Burgess; his blustery manner and scandalously minimal bathing suit threaten to overshadow his formidable swimming and coaching skills.
Wolffe turns out to be an unexpectedly complex character whose increasingly obstructive behavior apparently stems from the fact that he failed 20 times to swim the channel. Eccleston initially plays him as a grouchy crank, but the man’s still waters run deeper. The precise nature of the actual Wolffe’s influence on Trudy has fueled debate for literally a century; Nathanson’s script goes with the take Stout explores in his book.
Unfortunately, this film does a serious disservice to the actual results of Trudy’s participation in the 1924 Paris Summer Olympics. This is a needlessly cruel fabrication on Nathanson’s part: clearly designed to heighten the dramatic impact of what comes next, but nonetheless disturbing.
That aside, Rønning and Nathanson meticulous establish the numerous challenges and triumphs that Trudy experiences, en route to an increasingly suspenseful third act that builds to a climax that’ll have viewers applauding. The little details along the way are both fascinating and cringeworthy: mutton fat and a massive school of jellyfish ... ick!
Character development is nicely nuanced; the way Bodnia transforms Trudy’s father from irritable, abrasive and discouraging, to his daughter’s avid supporter, is particularly poignant.
Off-camera coach Siobhan-Marin O’Connor, an Olympic silver medalist, did her job well; Ridley’s swimming chops look authentic. Editor Úna Ní Dhonghaíle helps elevate the rising suspense; cinematographer Oscar Faura’s deep-sea footage is particularly vivid; and Amelia Warner’s orchestral score enhances the cheer-worthy events on camera.
Trudy never married, lived to be 98 (!), and died in a New Jersey elder care home in 2003 ... totally forgotten. It’s a crime that her story wasn’t revived sooner, so that she might have enjoyed this marvelous depiction of her career.
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