Young Woman and the Sea: Goes for the gold

Young Woman and the Sea (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for dramatic intensity and partial nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.2.24

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.

 

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).

Jeff Nathanson’s script, adapted from Glenn Stout’s 2009 non-fiction book of the same title, massages a few minor details but is rigorously authentic with respect to the significant events of Trudy Ederle’s life and career. Indeed, she became so astonishingly famous, for her time, that it’s incomprehensible that obscurity claimed her until only recently.

(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).

 

Thor, The Dark World: Another rich superhero soufflé

Thor: The Dark World (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for rather grim action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.8.13

One must give considerable credit to the master planners behind the current Marvel Comics movie franchise.

After Thor (Chris Hemsworth, right) reluctantly frees Loki (Tom Hiddleston) from his
Asgardian cell, Jane (Natalie Portman, foreground center) angrily warns the "god of
lies" that she'll go postal on him, if he even thinks of betraying the good guys. The
Asgardian warrior Sif (Jaimie Alexander), carrying a long-term torch for Thor, keeps
her own wary eye on Loki.

Starting with 2008’s Iron Man, and with no missteps, they’ve delivered a consistently entertaining blend of action, light humor and engaging character drama: no small feat, given the supplementary requirement of making these films accessible both to longtime comic book geeks and “regular folks.” Some films have slipped a little; others — notably The Avengers — have been excellent. All things considered, we’ve been having a rollicking good time.

(The X-Men and Spider-Man series have been equally well mounted, and kudos to them, as well. But — thus far — they’ve not been integrated into the current tapestry that showcases Thor, Captain America, the Hulk, the Avengers and SHIELD.)

Credit a blend of savvy directors, carefully calibrated scripts and strong casts, with equal attention paid to the all-essential supporting characters. It’s not easy to construct action epics this massive — with an ever-expanding back-story — while also penning droll, slightly mocking one-liners that demonstrate a willingness not to take things too seriously.

I haven’t seen that formula applied so capably since Sean Connery’s early James Bond escapades.

All of which brings us to Thor: The Dark World, which benefits from equally suitable acting talent. Broad-shouldered Chris Hemsworth is every inch the Asgardian warrior, absolutely fit to wield that marvelous magic hammer, and he also manages to look imperial — rather than silly — in that ridiculously ornate outfit. Anthony Hopkins brings regal Shakespearean sincerity to the florid dialogue we expect from Odin, ruler of Asgard; and Natalie Portman is a refreshingly brave, intelligent and resourceful human sidekick ... anything but a stock “girl in trouble.”

And as also was the case with Thor and The Avengers, this film is darn near stolen by Tom Hiddleston, so perfectly cast as the villainous, duplicitous trickster god, Loki. Speaking of the Bard, Shakespearean actors have long known that the bad guys have the best parts and get all the grand lines, and Hiddleston’s Loki has become the modern template against which all future fantasy baddies will be judged. He’s simply marvelous.