Her mother wants her right under her skirts forever. Her father is out of work and won't say it but needs a support system around him. Everyone around her is content to just hang out in Sacramento and/or call it a shithole. Her feelings are more conflicted. Its her home and she loves it, but it's suffocating her and so is her family and so is her life.
Typical of the genre, the film is touching and kind, having huge amounts of affection for everyone even as it skewers them. There are a few folks who come off as bastards (her horrible intellectual boyfriend who is content to just be 'woke' and do nothing, for example.) Her domineering mother comes off rather badly. She's someone who always has a harsh word and though it comes from a place of concern and love, it's wearying for this poor girl to always be frankly told that that dress doesn't look good, or that she'll never get into that college or whatever.
The central struggle of the film is Ladybird wanting more but also wanting to love her small-town family. How can she square wanting something better for herself with also honoring her roots? How can she say this life isn't for me without it being a rejection of her parents' lives? She constantly lies about where she lives, who she knows, what she's done, to make herself more interesting. She believes there's nothing at all interesting about Sacramento and she so desperately wants to be interesting. At the end of the film, at college, some guy asks her where she's from. "Sacramento" she admits. It's a big little moment for her. "Where?" the guy says. "Uh - San Francisco." Two steps forwards, one step back! How fun!
I liked this film, although it's sort of twee and cutesy. It's like a gentler Mean Girls or a less arch Juno. Funny, lovable, often difficult.
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