Young Woman And the Sea (2024)
Trudy Ederle was never supposed to survive measles, yet she did. She was never supposed to be a swimmer because the measles damaged her hearing and water would damage it even further, yet she became a champion swimmer, holding all major world records for women. She was never supposed to swim the English Channel, let alone make it across, yet she swam it twice. She not only succeeded on her second attempt, but bested the previous time by two hours.
That’s the story Young Woman And the Sea tells, and even though it’s a Disney movie, I made an exception to my usual rule because it was just that good and we need movies like this. Jerry Bruckheimer and Daisy Ridley are among the producers, which is awesome. I’m glad Ridley has gotten enough clout that she can take on production, and this movie was a great one to begin with. Take notes, Hollywood, because Young Woman And the Sea is a canary-in-the-coalmine kind of film.
The movie is wonderfully paced and compelling, showing Trudy and her family going from the family wanting to protect her to seeing what she can do and cheering her on. The hardest nut to crack is Trudy’s dad, a butcher and an old-style German immigrant who wants to arrange marriages for his daughters.
It all progresses pretty quickly, and the attitudes of the day, which dictate women shouldn’t swim or show too much leg at the beach get tossed aside, and Trudy inspires other little girls to learn to swim as well. Things don’t get especially deep, but we’re too busy cheering Trudy on to care too much.
Daisy Ridley puts in a wonderful performance. She has the Grim Determination look down pat, as anyone who has seen her knows, but as Trudy she can hardly be called a Mary Sue, because the movie never fails to drive home how much was against her as a woman in the nineteen twenties. Even Mr. Wolffe, the guy who’s supposed to coach her across the English Channel, doesn’t really want her to win, so seven miles into her first attempt he spikes her tea with seasickness remedy just so he can dive in and play hero.
He only plays, though. Wolffe has a Tommy Wiseau-type moment later involving a radio that’s pretty great.
The only thing that doesn’t seem to slow Trudy down too much is her hearing loss, which is treated more like a hiccup. No one has to change the way they talk around her or anything, although during the Channel swims her crew write messages to her on slates.
Speaking of the Channel swim, I wish we got to see more of how Trudy trained for that, because obviously it’s not a matter of diving in and hoping to get lucky, even for seasoned swimmers. A lot of the preparation process had to be left out for time, though, and a bit of the history was condensed or changed.
In the end, and this is the biggest reason my grade isn’t higher, is that Young Woman And the Sea looks like a Disney movie, which means it’s a bit too clean and perfect to be believable. Not that it has to be smutty or something just for the sake of it, but Ederle’s experiences weren’t that neat and tidy.
None of that, however, detracts from the story the movie tells. If Disney were to distribute more movies like this and champion more movies like this, and let’s be honest, they’re not putting a whole lot of energy into promoting the film, maybe they would quit hemorrhaging money the way they are. Same thing goes for the rest of Hollywood. There are still great stories for them to tell, but they need to dump the DEI garbage, put their manners back in, and give us more of what Ridley, Bruckheimer, and the rest did with Young Woman And the Sea.
Young Woman And the Sea is currently in theaters. Rated PG.
My grade: A-
Principal Cast: Daisy Ridley, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Stephen Graham, Kim Bodnia, Jeanette Hain, Ethan Rouse, Bashar Rahal, Doc Butler, Yordan Angelov, Sava Dragunchev, Robert Eaves, Tessa Bonham Jones, Saska Marguerite, Olive Abercrombie, Michael Amiar, Virginia Andonova, Mitko Angelov, Lilly Aspell
Directed by Joachim Ronning.
Written by Jeff Nathanson and Jeff Stout.