Catherine Called Birdy Parent Guide

Catherine, known to everyone as Birdy (Bella Ramsey), is a spunky fourteen-year-old who describes her “truest passions” as “avoiding my chores, critiquing my father’s horrible swordplay, disrupting cottage raisings, causing mischief in the village, and listening through doors I should not listen through.”

In our day, being a self-willed teenager is unremarkable, but this is Lincolnshire in 1290 and young ladies are supposed to be skilled in housewifely arts and completely obedient to their fathers – even when their spendthrift dads are on the verge of ruin and plan to marry off their daughters for gold.

In our day, selling your underage daughter in marriage would be considered child trafficking but it’s just another part of life in medieval England. Marriage for the aristocracy has nothing to do with love; it’s all about money, land, and alliances. Birdy is the greatest asset her father, Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott), has left and he desperately needs to broker a suitable marriage – but his stubborn, devious daughter is determined to thwart him by any means necessary.

Director Lena Dunham has never been known for nuance or subtlety and there’s none on display in this film. Catherine, Called Birdy is a primal scream for female autonomy; a demand for women to be respected as human beings with the right to control their own lives. (Birdy rages against her biological fate when she cries, “I shall never get to have anything like fun just because my birthright is to bleed.”) The story is an indictment of patriarchy, misogyny, and ignorance as scene after scene hammer home the horrors of a society in which females are nothing but chattel. It’s almost impossible not to watch this movie without feeling incensed on Birdy’s behalf – and female viewers will almost certainly feel themselves shivering with detestation as the elderly, flatulent, and lecherous Lord John Murgaw VIII threatens the 14-year-old girl with her marital destiny.

The appalling premise of forced child marriage rather overshadows the film’s negative content. There’s plenty of crude material (Lena Dunham’s directing after all), comprising fart jokes, double entendres, and innocent but misguided speculation about sex on the part of Birdy and her peers. Menstruation is a key plot element and Birdy’s bloody rags are seen more than once. There’s also brief mention of homosexuality and some randy comments by a drunk older man.

Catherine, Called Birdy is a difficult film to assess for family audiences thanks to its crude content and overpowering albeit sympathetic agenda. That said, the cast sparkles and delivers comic lines with impeccable timing. The jokes are often funny and the painful moments will tug at your heartstrings. If you know anything about medieval history, though, this film will drive you insane. The anachronisms keep piling up – don’t get me started on the books which are from the wrong era – and the contemporary soundtrack is sometimes funny but usually disconcerting. Too often, supposedly medieval characters spout opinions with a clearly modern provenance and that doesn’t work either. This is a movie designed to offer laughter and outrage in equal quantities, but the side order of frustration might deter audiences who like their history served with a higher level of accuracy.