The Young Woman and the Sea review: Daisy Ridley stars as ‘tenacious’ heroine

Previously six months or so, now we have had no fewer than three movies about feminine open-water swimmers, stated Brian Viner within the Each day Mail. 

The most recent stars Daisy Ridley as Trudy Ederle, the New Yorker who, in 1926, grew to become the primary girl to swim throughout the Channel. “It was a outstanding accomplishment, much more in order solely 5 males had completed it earlier than her, and the quickest of them took two hours longer than she did.” The story begins in Brooklyn in 1914, with Ederle struck down by the measles. Her mother and father suppose she’s going to die, however she proves she is made from sterner stuff: “she not solely recovers, however resolves to be taught to swim”, although her father (Kim Bodnia) considers it an “indecent” pursuit for a lady. 

From right here, the story “cleaves to the usual trajectory of such biopics” – with our “tenacious” heroine going through varied setbacks, however displaying time and again that “nothing is jolly nicely going to cease her”. The movie “deserves credit score” for reviving curiosity in Ederle’s achievements; however it is a bit of a belly-flop: “stolid”, inelegant and surprisingly devoid of historic context. 

The drama was conceived as simply one other piece of “streaming content material” for Disney+, stated Danny Leigh within the Monetary Occasions. However the completed product “charmed check audiences” a lot that it was given a theatrical launch. And whereas it does fairly prettify the story (New York’s tenements “twinkle so vividly you need to pack a bag and transfer in”), “it could take a churl to object to the schmaltz”; and Ridley is in high kind right here.

It is “unattainable to not root for Trudy”, stated Charles Bramesco in The Guardian. However she’s flatly drawn, as a gleaming “mascot for all that’s good and proper”. We do not be taught a lot about who she actually was, or what drove her.