Producers: Lena Dunham, Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan and Jo Wallett Director: Lena Dunham Screenplay: Lena Dunham Cast: Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott, Billie Piper, Joe Alwyn, Isis Hainsworth, Michael Woolfitt, Sophie Okonedo, Lesley Sharp, David Bradley, Mimi Ndiweni, Dean-Charles Chapman, Archie Renaux and Paul Kaye Distributor: Amazon Studios/Prime Video
Grade: C
The Middle Ages invite treatment on screen that covers the spectrum from brutal (“The Last Duel”) to serious (“Becket”) to cheeky (“The Lion in Winter”) to positively goofy (“Monty Python and the Holy Grail”). With her adaptation of the 1994 YA novel by Karen Cushman, Lena Dunham enters the field with what amounts to a medieval version of a rebellious girl’s coming of age, facing societal and parental demands that conflict with her independent streak. It just anachronistically transplants a story that might be told in a modern teen growing-up comedy into another historical contact, to only sporadically amusing effect. In that regard perhaps the earlier movie it most resembles is “A Knight’s Tale,” though it doesn’t bother making that picture’s quasi-historical allusions—there are no genuinely historical figures introduced here—and the tone is more raucously Monty Pythonesque. But it does also use modern pop tunes on the soundtrack to supplement Carter Burwell’s perkily contemporary take on period chant.
The year, we’re told, is 1290 and the place is England, specifically the village of Stonebridge in the shire of Lincoln. Catherine (Bella Ramsey), nicknamed Birdy for her love of avian critters, is the fourteen-year old daughter of debt-ridden spendthrift Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott) and his lovely wife Lady Aislinn (Billie Piper). Thankfully, Catherine’s not a relentless warrior of the sort Joey King played in the recent actioner “The Princess.” She’s an inveterate tomboy, roughhousing with her peasant playmate Perkin (Michael Woolfitt) and Meg (Rita Bernard-Shaw), a cheery if nervous maid-servant.
But she’s getting to the point where Rollo will marry her off, and since he’s in need of cash it will be to a high bidder, and she detests the idea of being paired with some old coot or a child—her friend Aelis (Isis Hainsworth) is actually betrothed to a boy of nine. The only man whom she has the slightest in marrying is her uncle George (Joe Alwyn), a handsome, dashing crusader (though what crusade he’d been on is unclear—the last crusading venture before 1290 had been Prince Edward’s Crusade, or the Ninth Crusade, in 1271-72). But he’s now world-weary and in need of money himself, and so marries the odd but rich Ethelfritha (Sophie Okonedo).
Catherine gets little support from her older brother Robert (Dean-Charles Chapman), who just teases her about her predicament, or even Aislinn, who’s sympathetic but, having gone through plenty of miscarriages herself, attuned to the reality of things; and her aged nurse Morwenna (Lesley Sharp) can offer little but commiserations and remonstrance against unladylike behavior, while her brother Edward the Monk (Archie Renaux) just provides instructive reading material, and curdled curmudgeon Lord Gideon (David Bradley) remarks on her failings even as his spunky wife (Mimi Ndiweni) needles him
So it’s up to Catherine to do what she can to deter suitors, indulging in precisely the sort of behavior that marks her as unruly and uncontrollable and waylaying potential husbands before they can even make it to the castle. Nevertheless Rollo receives a handsome offer from one of the most undesirable of men, leering, piggish old Sir John (Paul Kaye), whom Catherine dismisses with disgust as Shaggy Beard. When push comes to shove, though, Rollo can’t go through with such a gruesome match. Dunham ends things on a note of father-daughter bonding which seems more than a mite implausible in terms of the historical facts about medieval women she’s already established (though very much in line with modern sensibilities), while managing to resolve Rollo’s financial problems anyway.
Ramsey, while no conventional beauty, certainly nails Catherine’s rambunctiousness, which some will find often gravitates more toward selfish obnoxiousness than charm. But Dunham’s touch with her, as with the other members of the cast, is hardly firm; many of the performances come off as rather slapdash, as if first takes had been the order of the day. Visually, she opts for grubby and grimy; Kave Quinn’s production design and Julian Day’s costumes avoid any hint of elegance, and Laurie Rose’s cinematography embrace a degree of rawness many will consider pretty sloppy, a quality accentuated by Joe Klotz’s editing. The use of caption cards, done up in the style of Gothic-style manuscripts, to give us humorous information on the characters as they’re introduced, meanwhile, is a joke that grows increasingly cutesy as the movie progresses, as well as a crutch to avoid having to fill out things by way of dialogue and exposition—perhaps a necessity in view of the overpopulation in the script, but a pretty tacky technique nonetheless.
But the most serious issue with “Catherine Called Birdy” is its all-too-easy employment of the medieval setting to tell what’s basically a contemporary teen tale, and its willingness to ridicule medieval beliefs that mirror what it considers benighted modern ones, presumably to tell us that women’s predicaments haven’t changed much over the centuries. (An abrupt revelation about one character’s sexual leanings, as well as Catherine’s reaction to it, is characteristic of its modern sensibilities.) If the picture were funnier, you might be inclined to overlook the fundamental weaknesses; but it isn’t.