The Young Woman and the Sea: Daisy Ridley stars as 'tenacious' heroine
In the past six months or so, we have had no fewer than three films about female open-water swimmers, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail.
The latest stars Daisy Ridley as Trudy Ederle, the New Yorker who, in 1926, became the first woman to swim across the Channel. "It was a remarkable accomplishment, even more so as only five men had done it before her, and the fastest of them took two hours longer than she did." The story begins in Brooklyn in 1914, with Ederle struck down by the measles. Her parents think she's going to die, but she proves she is made of sterner stuff: "she not only recovers, but resolves to learn to swim", though her father (Kim Bodnia) considers it an "indecent" pursuit for a girl.
From here, the story "cleaves to the standard trajectory of such biopics" – with our "tenacious" heroine facing various setbacks, but showing again and again that "nothing is jolly well going to stop her". The film "deserves credit" for reviving interest in Ederle's achievements; but it's a bit of a belly-flop: "stolid", inelegant and surprisingly devoid of historical context.
The drama was conceived as just another piece of "streaming content" for Disney+, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times. But the finished product "charmed test audiences" so much that it was given a theatrical release. And while it does rather prettify the tale (New York's tenements "twinkle so vividly you want to pack a bag and move in"), "it would take a churl to object to the schmaltz"; and Ridley is in top form here.
It's "impossible not to root for Trudy", said Charles Bramesco in The Guardian. But she's flatly drawn, as a gleaming "mascot for all that is good and right". We don't learn much about who she really was, or what drove her.
