10 Best Lady Bird Moments
5. Theater Auditions
If you were ever a part of your high school drama club, or you grew up performing in community theater, the audition sequence in Lady Bird probably gave you hives.
It’s obvious that Greta Gerwig, an actor herself, spent a considerable amount of time as a theater kid. It’s just so accurate. From the song choices, especially “Giants in the Sky” from “Into the Woods”, a song every teenage tenor was obsessed with at one point, to Lady Bird’s crush on Danny, a boy who definitely isn’t actually into girls.
4. Marion Drives Back to the Airport
Toward the end of the film, Lady Bird gets accepted into a college in Manhattan, resulting in Marion refusing to speak to her for the entire summer. When they eventually drive Lady Bird to the airport, Marion refuses to go inside and see her daughter off. She’s still too hurt and angry. After Lady Bird gets out of the car, Marion drives around the block, becomingly increasingly upset as she does so. She finally begins to cry and frantically makes her way back to the airport and only to find that she’s too late – Lady Bird is gone.
It’s filmed almost completely in one shot, with the camera seemingly resting on the dash, unmoving, as Marion drives around, slowly coming to the realization that her daughter might be leaving for good. Laurie Metcalf’s performance here is stunning – so raw and honest. Her breakdown is effortless and it’s easy to see why this performance earned her an Oscar nomination.
3. Lady Bird Has Sex for the First Time
While making out with Kyle in his bed one Sunday afternoon, Lady Bird decides she’s ready to have sex for the first time. What follows is a painfully awkward encounter that ends with her getting a nose bleed. After it’s all over, Lady Bird discovers that Kyle wasn’t exactly telling the truth about his sexual history. Turns out, he’s not even a virgin.
“I just had a whole experience that was wrong,” Lady Bird says in awe.
Characters exploring their sexuality for the first time are par for the course in coming-of-age stories. That loss of innocence is so integral to the journey from adolescence to adulthood. It’s a moment that is not always as special as we’d hoped for. It’s never as magical as the fantasy.
This moment between Lady Bird and Kyle is funny and a little sad, and it showcases how well Ronan and Chalamet play off of each other as actors – there’s something so easy about them. It’s no wonder that Gerwig cast them opposite each other again in her adaptation of Little Women.
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