Lena Dunham brings Catherine, Called Birdy to life in new teaser
Bella Ramsey stars in Dunham's long-awaited Medieval coming-of-age film
Aux News Lena Dunham
Thirteen years in the making, and we finally have our first look at Lena Dunham’s Catherine, Called Birdy. Based on Karen Kushman’s 1996 YA novel of the same name, the film stars Bella Ramsey as a young woman set to be married off to boost her father’s waning fortunes.
In the first footage released from Dunham’s latest directorial effort, Birdy gets up to some mischief in her small village of Stonebridge and terrorizes her insolvent father (Fleabag’s Andrew Scott). The period piece is definitely a departure from Dunham’s usual finger-on-the-pulse modern fare, but it’s easy to see why Birdy’s spirit drew her to the story.
The adaptation has been in the works for more than a decade now. Dunham first described her passion project back in 2014, saying the novel is “full of incest and beatings,” but also “hyper-realistic and really pretty.” In the present, the filmmaker was a bit more eloquent about the story, telling Teen Vogue:
“I wanted to highlight this girl who was living in the wrong time. If she was living in 2022, she would be a pretty classic tomboy or able to explore the gender binary, she’d be able to play all the sports she wanted. All of her dreams, which in 1290 are to go to a hanging and run around without a skirt on, would be achievable. But there are still as we know, huge challenges to being a woman in this day and age, and a teenage girl.”
In fact, Dunham said the medieval setting feels a little too relevant: “While it feels very far away that a 13-year-old is being asked to marry a 50-year-old, we still have plenty of barbaric customs that control the way people’s bodies are dealt with.”
She continued, “There’s so many aspects to modern life that still speak to themes of the book. I really love that we were able to highlight aspects of that, and the way the world has changed but also the way it’s stayed the same. And do it with some humor.”
Catherine, Called Birdy also stars Joe Alwyn, Ralph Ineson, Billie Piper, and Isis Hainsworth. The film hits theaters on September 23 and streams on Prime Video October 7.
11 Comments
This looks better than I thought. I must admit I side eyed Lena Dunham doing this, and I enjoyed the first season of Girls before she thought being insufferable was an interesting character trait but this didn’t seem in her wheel house. Maybe she is one of those creators who does better by the limitations of adaptation versus creative free rein.
YAY!!!!
I still love Girls and have rewatched it all the way through at least once, but everything she’s done since hasn’t interested me at all. This looks promising though. Fingers crossed.
Girls is amazing, and I always thought the critique that it was a beacon of the issues of white feminism fell flat. it was never pretending like these girls were aspirational.and Dunham was making a lot of the same missteps a lot of other white middle class millennials were making in centring themselves, she was like a weird millennial guide in how not to behave.
I agree with everything you’re saying, but I would add that part of her writing/process/’brand’ is to take everything a little too far. Her character’s could’ve just stopped talking and everything would have been fine, but they can’t help themselves. The series finale is the perfect example of this. They could’ve ended on the penultimate episode and it would’ve been a pretty picture perfect ending, but instead it ends with her boobs in some sort of milking contraption fighting with Marnie.I think this instinct absolutely comes from her personal life, which is why a lot of people are put off by her. Maybe it’s just because I’m also guilty of putting my foot in my mouth too often, but it feels very real in a way that a lot of shows are unwilling to do for their female protagonists (unless they’re older)
I wasn’t excited about Lena Dunham but don’t think I can resist Bella Ramsey. And it sounds like it may be timely and smart.
This looks interesting. But are women funny? My thoughts:
This was one of my favorite books as a kid, and I’m not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, Birdy is definitely meant to be a mischievous, rebellious character, and that aspect seems right. But I’m not sure why they turned the dad into a silly foppish guy when 90% of the book is about him trying to marry his 12 year-old off to a middle-aged man that she hates.
I don’t remember much of Catherine Called Birdy except that I LOVED it as a kid (and the Midwife’s Apprentice by the same author). I strongly dislike Lena Dunham (she’s like a right-wing caricature of women in my generation) so I have mixed feelings about this.
We read this in sixth grade, and I remember liking it a lot, and this trailer cracked me up. It’s a good day for pleasant little surprises! For a horrible moment I thought Lena Dunham was going to play Catherine, and try to make everyone pretend with her that she can pass herself off as a kid, so this is much better
I was so excited to hear about this because it is one of my favorite books, but …What the hell did Lena do with this book? Catherine doesn’t steal chickens. Her father isn’t some femme layabout. He is a knight! He’s a bully. Augh.