Young Woman and the Sea: Daisy Ridley in a predictable, but well-crafted biopic

Gertrude "Trudy" Ederle, born into a family of German immigrants in Brooklyn in 1905, did not have an easy life. At just nine years old, she nearly died from a severe form of measles, but against all odds, she survived and decided to pursue swimming. During the hours she fought between life and death, a fire on a steamship in New York harbor had caused the death of hundreds of women, who remained on board because they were unable to reach shore on their own.

At that time, swimming was considered an unsuitable activity for girls and even detrimental to their health, to the point that her own father tried to dissuade her. But with the help of her inseparable sister Meg and the support of her mother, she specialized and set numerous world records in freestyle swimming. Until she decided to attempt an epic feat, achieved then by only a few men: swimming the 34 kilometers of the English Channel.

Young Woman and the Sea: Against All Odds

Commercial biographical cinema, especially when it comes to American productions intended for the big screen, has often shown a propensity to take refuge in tried-and-true narrative formulas. Young Woman and the Sea, a film produced by Walt Disney Pictures in collaboration with Jerry Bruckheimer Films, fits perfectly into this mold, bringing to the screen the epic feat accomplished by Gertrude Ederle, known to all as Trudy, the first woman to swim across the Channel.

The impression at the end of the two hours of viewing is that of having witnessed a work that preferred to navigate in safe waters without ever daring a true dive into the unknown that could have provided more nuances. To be clear, the film fulfills its task of committed themed entertainment with diligence and considerable emotional impact, but the formulaic approach, not without some obvious forcing here and there in the screenwriting phase, made everything too simple and predictable.

A Protagonist Who Stands Out

The film, available on Disney+, follows the protagonist's struggle to face not only the difficulties of a challenge that had exhausted many of her male colleagues, some of whom gave up midway, but also a strongly patriarchal society of the time, as highlighted by the intrusive and hostile presence of her own coach, who never believed in her. A protagonist who finds heart and soul in a surprising Daisy Ridley, who outside the Star Wars universe manages to find greater inspiration, also under the weight of certainly lesser "responsibilities" and without the critical gaze of the fandom always ready to judge her.

She is the alpha and omega of a portrayal that deliberately sketches the background to focus on this courageous girl and on the message she embodies, with the focus on the swimmer's determination and that of those close to her – sister and mother first and foremost – to cast an empathetic anchor towards a viewer who, despite being aware of the narrative cleverness, will easily be captivated by the climax of the story. A pathos that increases in the various key scenes also thanks to Amelia Warner's emphatic and magniloquent soundtrack, which accompanies the key moments of the narrative with solemn redundancy.

The open-water shots guarantee a considerable dose of themed spectacle, with the direction of Norwegian Joachim Rø;nning as a guarantee in this sense, as he is a true expert in aquatic adventures, from the striking Kon-Tiki (2012) to the much-mocked adventure of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017).

It is based on the book written in 2009 by Glenn Stout, based precisely on the life of the real Trudy, who appears in the end credits in those archival footage clips that inform us about what happened to her after this feat that made her enter the legend of sport and transformed her into a universal symbol for women's rights.