YOUNG WOMAN AND THE SEA. The Butcher’s Daughter Who Didn’t Want to Gut Chickens [REVIEW]

It’s good to occasionally remember events that seem insignificant to the average person, like the swimming of the English Channel on August 6, 1926, accomplished by Trudy Ederle. One feels joy and hope that 100 years ago there were people like her, bravely challenging the idiotic order of the world. Unfortunately, there’s also sadness that it’s not 500, but only 100 years. It could have been at least 300 if not for cultural legacies. The film “Young Woman and the Sea” by Joachim Rønning, starring Daisy Ridley, shows in a sensational and dramatically engaging way how difficult it was for a woman to even be allowed by the male world to jump into the water – not to mention competing in races or breaking records that undermined male strength.

Swimming the Channel was thus a summary or, more importantly, a sign, a message to the whole world that changes cannot be stopped, only senselessly delayed. So why fight them? Out of mindlessness? Out of an overwhelming fear of having to leave defeated, like Trudy’s coach, who did everything to prevent her from winning?

Her father planned for her to marry an unattractive man who could only say the word “peanut” in English. Her mother talked about gutting chickens, and her friends at the pool mocked her for stoking the furnace instead of racing with them. Scarlet fever took much of her hearing. She was forbidden from entering the water. She didn’t even finish school, but she had dreams of competitive swimming. She won several medals at the 1924 Paris Olympics. She lived almost 100 years, despite having a serious accident that cost her much of her athletic ability and the rest of her hearing. However, she found her calling in training deaf children, using her swimming and life experience, knowing that no one helped her because of her hearing impairment. Such was Trudy Ederle, and her biography testifies only to the fact that she was truly a great person, while others wanted to see her as just an ordinary woman because they intuitively knew that her personality went far beyond their dreams, not to mention their characters and real physical capabilities.

I once wrote that I’m less impressed by movies (such as “Dunkirk“) that can’t surprise me because I already know the story they tell. I still hold that opinion. In the case of “Young Woman and the Sea,” which is an adaptation of Glenn Stout’s book, there couldn’t be any twist, as you can read on Wikipedia in 5 minutes that Trudy’s next attempt to swim the Channel was ultimately successful. From the beginning, it was clear how the film would end. The trick, however, is how the director led me as a viewer to that obvious conclusion and what else he managed to tell me during the plot before the heroine, with a laurel wreath on her head, stood on the English shore. He reminded me of a piece of our European cultural history that we have forgotten too quickly, for example, when harshly criticizing the Middle Eastern world from today’s perspective for deprecating the role of women. In our own backyard, things weren’t any better, and that was not very long ago. It still isn’t good, but Western liberal populism cleverly hides the prevailing backwardness, for example, in access to work, specialized medical procedures, or general societal position.

That’s why films like “Young Woman and the Sea” are made, so that no one forgets what the West, along with America, was like for hundreds of years compared to, for example, Slavic countries, and not in the 20th century, but many centuries earlier, when our bourgeoisie and nobility enjoyed such social and religious freedoms that those by the Loire, Tagus, and Thames could only dream of.

However, as always in films with an ideological and pro-social message, and undoubtedly “Young Woman and the Sea” is such a production, the pathos is bothersome, which the creators cannot avoid when telling about the great deeds of American citizens. So, whenever it became more sensational and Trudy successfully fought against the cold water, jellyfish, and her own disobedient body, there had to be loud and dramatic music in the background, distracting from the emotions arising from the scene of the heroine’s struggle for victory. If the lofty form and content were toned down, it would be calmer, perhaps more documentary-like, but the audience would notice more emotions in the heroine, whom Daisy Ridley tried to portray with all her acting might. I didn’t expect such good acting from her, especially after the latest Star Wars episodes. In short, there’s no need to show the fight for great victories with colorful fireworks in the sky, which the camera keeps showing. And I’m not even criticizing the huge parade in New York in Trudy’s honor but the entire pathos before that scene when Trudy was in the water, and everyone around her cheered, shouted, and then cried.

Nevertheless, the film is engaging with its way of building tension, narrative, and aesthetics. The early 20th-century world in the USA is meticulously depicted locally. The story received brisk editing, ensuring even the more difficult documentary scenes last as long as necessary to conclude the thread, tell everything important, even if more narratively complicated, and end it without over-talking or dragging, which is so tiring in many films considered more artistic. The number of words spoken by actors doesn’t always indicate wisdom but a lack of control by the director over the script’s content.

“Young Woman and the Sea” possesses not so much artistic value as popular-cultural and entertainment value. It is a good film in terms of the fun of participating in this wonderful adventure that cinema offers our imagination. A bit tiring due to unnecessary solemnity. What’s most important, however, is that it tackles a topic that can be discussed intensely and for a long time after the screening, and also analyze reality from this angle – can a woman do it. That’s how a film should work, that even after it ends, it stays in your head and provokes thought. A solid 6.5/10.