Here’s Ilich on Lady Bird (2017)...

Pride Month and its celebrations are so outrageously fun to participate in because they feel so earned. The titular pride almost never comes immediately after queer people identify, at least to themselves, as such. It’s often preceded by confusion and a paralyzing fear that interrupts as many opportunities of rational thought as it can. Queer people take their time navigating through awkward stages of a sort of grief that will hopefully lead to that realization that they are free to be themselves without fear, and definitely without shame. Hints of these stages are warmly depicted in Greta Gerwig’s endlessly satisfying directorial debut Lady Bird. Through Danny (Lucas Hedges) and his friendship with the film’s protagonist, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), Gerwig’s script fleshes out the performances that many rehearse in the process of accepting their nature...