FILM REVIEW: YOUNG WOMAN AND THE SEA
By Phoebe Ann Brooks
Photo Credit: Walt Disney Co / Everrett // Shutterstock
This film left me devastated and uplifted in equal measure.
My friend and I decided to do a double bill at the cinema, beginning with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes before moving on, I am ashamed to say reluctantly, to Young Woman and the Sea.
We started with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes because TikTok reviews had given us a dose of brain rot that there was an apparent sexual tension between ape Noah, and human Nova…no further questions on that one.
After feeling a little sleepy and a little hungry, we very nearly skipped seeing Young Woman and the Sea in exchange for a questionable Chinese buffet. Thank goodness we didn’t!
We went from discussing the moral implications of a cinematic sexual tension between a human-level intelligent ape and a human to this movie hitting us like a train.
This movie, which I am scared is on a path to being criminally underrated given that we were the only ones in the cinema to see it bar two small groups of older women, needs to be watched by everyone.
Young Woman and the Sea tells the story of competitive swimmer, Trudy Ederle, who, in 1926, became the first woman to ever swim across the English Channel.
Daisy Ridley plays Trudy Ederle
Photo credit: Anthony Harvey // Shutterstock
This Disney production is directed by Joachim Rønning and written by Jeff Nathanson and Glenn Stout, who are known for Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (Rønning), and The Lion King, The Terminal and Catch Me If You Can (Nathanson).
Daisy Ridley takes on the role of Trudy, a real-life champion whose trajectory in success is challenged and sabotaged along the way...mostly by men…shock.
As the movie opens, we meet the young and stubborn Trudy who wants to swim despite her parents’ fears she could lose her hearing after a near-fatal measles infection; and her father’s particular fear of how it might look for a girl to be swimming in the small Brooklyn community.
Her resilience and determination follow her into adulthood when we see Ridley take the helm of the movie.
Trudy and her sister (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) work hard to join the Women’s Swimming Association.
It is here that Trudy shines and finds herself invited to represent America at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. It is also here that Trudy gets a true taste of what it means to go against the status quo.
Trudy and her team face prejudice and ridicule for being female athletes. On the boat from Brooklyn to Paris, the women are forced to remain in their rooms next to the boiler room while nuns keep watch in the corridor. Kept in cages next to a noisy furnace and unable to catch any sleep, the women don’t perform well at the Olympics.
Although in reality, Trudy and the American women’s team returned home with medals, the movie portrays the homecoming as a sombre failure. Trudy does not achieve what she set out to do: to be the best athlete she could be. Ultimately, the Olympics is not the triumph of women in sport that the team hoped.
Here, we have a moment of sobering reality. On the surface the audience rallies with the women in anger and frustration that they are athletes not allowed to train while the real reason the women are caged and guarded by nuns is to keep them safe from the three hundred male passengers, and fifty crew members. Perhaps a boat of bears would have needed less precautions?
Photo Credit: Walt Disney Co / Everrett // Shutterstock
This made me realise that whilst we often celebrate women in history for overcoming the often harmful ideologies of their time, perhaps we don’t look enough at the nuances of their realities and the truth of the hardships they had to overcome.
After the women’s Olympics team is disbanded with no funding, Trudy realises that the world of sport is as limited as the perspectives of the men who run it.
She sets her sights on a much bigger challenge to show them what she can do…to swim the English Channel, something that, at this point, has only ever been accomplished by five men.
With more grit and determination than I could muster in a lifetime, Trudy manages to get sponsorship for her trip to France to begin the challenge.
When she lands she is met with suspicion and hostility, none more so than from her new coach to see her across the channel, Jabez Wolffe (Christopher Eccleston).
Wolffe is a twelve-time trier, and twelve-time didn’t-quite-make-it of the channel crossing.
His character is the human embodiment of a red flag – proven when a barman pokes his ego saying if Trudy succeeds, he will have to say he lost to a woman, leading Wolffe to throw furniture out of the window in anger. Again, this is a moment when a creative licence may have taken priority over an accurate retelling.
The movie shows Trudy’s first attempt as one doomed to fail under the patriarchal eyes of Wolffe, the press, and the world.
Midway through the swim, Wolffe’s fragility gets the best of him.
Photo Credit: Walt Disney Co / Everrett // Shutterstock
If there was ever a scene to read a little too much into, it would be this one. If Wolffe is the Devil, then Trudy is Eve: in the gruelling race to England, he offers her an apple to re-energise mid-swim. As he hands her the apple, he pretends to slip and tries to touch her, knowing that any contact with another person renders the swim finished and Trudy would be disqualified.
Trudy narrowly avoids the trap and, in the words of another Disney classic, just keeps swimming. But Wolffe is not done yet. This time, he offers tea laced with sleeping medication and fragile masculinity.
Trudy begins to struggle against the current as the medication takes hold. We see her distress as the spiked drink takes effect. In an instant, Wolffe goes from saboteur to saviour and pulls her from the water.
From here we realise the double standard which prevails even today: whilst Wolffe can admirably try and fail into the double digits, Trudy had just one chance.
Or so we think.
In walks Bill Burgess (Stephen Graham), a channel swim success story in his own right, and he is ready to take on Trudy as his new protege.
Now, this is hardly a spoiler given that the film is based on a true story, but second time round Trudy makes it to the beaches of England.
“I FELT LIKE I WAS WATCHING A REAL PERSON RATHER THAN AN ARCHETYPE OF A CHARACTER MADE TO TICK BOXES FOR CERTAIN CONVENTIONS.”
The final quarter of the film gives us enough time to stay with our hero as she makes the journey. We see struggle, grit, and eventually a truly earnt heroic win.
My friend and I were in PIECES! We had literal tears streaming down our faces throughout the entire movie, but this final slog for Trudy, and let's be honest, women everywhere, really hit home for us.
We still live in a world where the patriarchy will try to beat down anything which might outgrow it. Young Woman and the Sea shows how patriarchal systems consistently hamper Trudy’s path to greatness and how she perseveres nonetheless.
Ridley’s Trudy is a character you want to root for. She is the hero of her own story and not your typical type for a heroine or underdog. Trudy is fallible, quietly confident but there is doubt.
She feels like a very human character even in this dramatised rendition.
Trudy is rooted in reality, and I felt like I was watching a real person rather than an archetype of a character made to tick boxes for certain conventions.
There is no rousing moment when she gives a dramatically compelling speech about getting up when you get knocked down while music swells in the background. She dives in the water and you feel the jeopardy as you will her to keep swimming.
Although there are some criticisms of the accuracy of events, I can honestly say I don’t care. I wouldn’t want a single moment of this film changed for accuracy's sake.
This is a dramatic retelling of the story of an amazing athlete and not a documentary. Google is free if anyone wants to learn more. But for the two-hour and nine-minute runtime you laugh, you cry, you get angry, you celebrate.
This is a film which will ignite a fire even a swim in the ocean couldn’t put out.