Throughout history, there has been one universal truth: A teenager is a teenager, no matter the era. That’s the sensibility of “Catherine Called Birdy,” a new film adapted from Karen Cushman’s 1994 young adult novel of the same name.
The book, about a rebellious teen girl living in the English feudal system of 1290, has been beloved by readers for nearly three decades. One of those readers, who discovered the novel when she was 10, is the picture’s writer-director, Lena Dunham.
“It was of another time, literally and figuratively,” Dunham remembers. “And so it took a little while to find the partner, which turned out to be Working Title, who understand what it was meant to be.”With ‘Catherine Called Birdy,’ Lena Dunham’s best writing and directing work yet shows girl issues are timeless.
“Nina Gold, our casting director, said: ‘I think I know who this is,’ and pulled out a picture of Bella,” Dunham recalls. “I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s who it is.’ Before Bella came in and read, there had always been a blurry spot where Birdy’s face was and now I could see the face. And I knew that the film lived and died by Birdy because she is in every frame, [because] even when we’re not looking at her, we’re looking out through her eyes.
“He’s the one that changed the most from the book,” she says. “He’s a very brutish, almost like a primitive man in the book. And something that Andrew and I talked about early on was the idea that we didn’t want any of the male characters to feel like these stereotypes of anti-feminist male-hood. Andrew really brought up this idea [that] every single person in this world is trapped by convention in their own way.
“I interpreted him as that very recognizable figure in a young person’s life, however old you are, when you have someone, be it a neighbor or a friend or a family member or a teacher or whoever it might be, that is completely the knight in shining armor in your life,” Alwyn says. “That feeling was so relatable. As was the moment where that façade falls down. You either realize, or you are told, or a bit of both, that they’re actually just pretty normal.
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