In an era where women athletes continue to fight for their place in the spotlight, one where cinematic representations still number fewer than those centering men, even a cozy, all-ages take on a true story such as Young Woman and the Sea earns its place of relevance. Starring Daisy Ridley as Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926, Young Woman is a biopic with all sharp edges removed, the kind of non-threatening, inspirational Disney movie that teachers screen for fidgety students on the last day of fourth grade.
But not even its foursquare blandness can tamp down Ridley’s vivacity in the lead role, her tenacity capturing the spirit of its subject. Ederle endured the era’s systemic sexism that decreed that women were too weak to follow such pursuits, yet after suffering through childhood measles and surviving a brush with death, she and her older sister Meg (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) train with a girls’ swim team. We see Trudy evolve from a girl who dog-paddles around a New York City pier just to earn a free Nathan’s hot dog to a successful swimmer who breaks multiple world records.
Alas, nobody cares about women’s sports: Trudy goes to the 1924 Olympics, but her misogynist coach Jabez Wolffe (Christopher Eccleston) ensconces the women swimmers in their cabins during the ocean voyage to Paris, not letting them exercise over concerns for their “safety.” (Her subsequent bronze medals are ignored in the press in favor of Johnny Weismuller’s gold.) “They don’t want us to be heroes,” observes Meg. “They don’t want us to be anything.”
And when it seems like US women’s swimming is all washed up, Trudy decides to tackle the Channel, even though her backers once again saddle her with Wolffe — who failed to complete the crossing, on multiple occasions — rather than Trudy’s actual coach Charlotte “Eppy” Epstein (Sian Clifford, Fleabag).
While Young Woman and the Sea is based on real events, the results suggest a studio-notes version of a more complex story. Ederle’s accomplishments take the front seat, and she’s a streamlined presence unencumbered by any concern besides the athletic work at hand, any sort of personal relationships outside of her scrappy crew: Eppy, Meg, her initially recalcitrant father (Kim Bodnia), her supportive mother (Jeanette Hain), and Bill Burgess (Stephen Graham), the boozy pro swimmer who was the second man to cross the Channel, 15 years earlier.
Ridley radiates strength and determination — and that’s a good thing, since “strength and determination” is about all the personality bestowed upon Ederle in the screenplay by Jeff Nathanson (The Lion King 2019), adapting the biography by Glenn Stout. The lack of specificity in a character who was clearly driven to go above and beyond what society expected or even wanted of her makes one appreciate the crankiness and obsessiveness of Annette Bening’s recent portrayal of Diana Nyad.
Director Joachim Rønning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) keeps Young Woman and the Sea moving along at a brisk pace and looking visually rich; production designer Michael Corenblith offers a wealth of period detail in all the 1920s newsreel cameras, swimming costumes, and gaslit New York sidewalks. And to its credit, the movie knows how to deliver those big inspirational moments when Trudy defies the odds and the nay-sayers. (The film’s final heart-stirring moment might have landed with a little more resonance had another recent Disney docudrama, 2016’s The Finest Hours, not staged a nearly-identical climactic sequence.)
For parents who want to expose their children to media that champions the idea of young women being capable of anything they set their minds to, Young Woman and the Sea certainly fills the bill. It might even encourage young women to one day celebrate their own heroes in movies that are less generic than this one.
Director: Joachim Rønning
Screenwriter: Jeff Nathanson, based on the book “Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World” by Glenn Stout
Cast: Daisy Ridley, Tilda Cobham-Harvey, Stephen Graham, Kim Bodnia, Jeanette Hain, Christopher Eccleston, Glenn Fleshler
Producers: Jerry Bruckheimer, Chad Oman, Jeff Nathanson
Executive producers: John G. Scotti, Daisy Ridley, Joachim Rønning
Director of photography: Oscar Faura
Production design: Nora Takacs Ekberg
Costume design: Gabriele Binder
Editing: Úna NÍ Donghaíle
Music: Amelia Warner
Sound design: Tormod Ringnes, supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer/sound designer; Luke Gentry, supervising sound editor/sound designer
Production companies: Walt Disney Pictures, Jerry Bruckheimer Films
In English
129 minutes
