There’s a moment in Joachim Rønning’s “Young Woman and the Sea” that will inevitably tickle fans of swim-centric biopics about fierce ladies (the same audience who was treated to “Nyad” late last year): our titular “young woman” (Daisy Ridley as Trudy Ederle) is midway through her perilous, record-breaking swim, when a jellyfish threatens her. Well, multiple jellyfish. A whole school of them, hundreds probably. She just keeps swimming. Diana? Well, she had her jellyfish run-ins, but those were one at a time. Trudy? She took ’em by the dozen.
That’s not to pit these two swimming super-stars against each other, but there is a whiff of “before Diana, there was Trudy” to the entire affair and, frankly, there should be. While Diana Nyad is an extraordinarily modern heroine — a former broadcast journalist who was able to hit the Netflix-backed publicity circuit hard — Trudy Ederle literally hails from an entirely different time (and passed away over two decades ago). And what Trudy did, she did long before Diana was even born. With more jellyfish, and way less support.
Much like E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Nyad,” most people who opt to watch “Young Woman and the Sea” will likely know where it ends: in victory. The real Trudy Ederle’s accomplishments were myriad, but she’s best known for becoming the first woman to swim across the English Channel. When you hear that on paper, or at least in mileage — about 21 miles, straight between France and England — it might not sound as impressive, as nearly impossible as it really is. Oh, but it was. And, as Joachim Rønning’s rousing, family-friendly adventure epic reminds us straight away, Ederle did it at a time when most women didn’t even swim, let alone competitively.
When we first meet Ridley’s Trudy, she’s standing on the edge of a French beach, covered in petroleum jelly, under a blazing sun, and staring at a roiling ocean ahead of her. There’s no land to be seen. There are no other swimmers around. Rønning, a filmmaker who knows his way around water (see: his remarkable “Kon-Tiki,” the somewhat soggy “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”), doesn’t skimp and he doesn’t sugarcoat. It looks horrifying.
Trudy? She’s having fun with it. No, really, because as she readies to take on the journey of a lifetime, she starts singing a jaunty tune: “Ain’t We Got Fun,” a song that pokes (relative) fun at what it’s like to be down and out in the Roaring Twenties. Trudy would know a little about that, as Rønning (armed with a script by Jeff Nathanson and Glenn Stout) soon zips us back in time, to Trudy’s not-so-fun childhood.
It’s 1914. New York City. Trudy and her family — including her German immigrant parents, plus a brother and a sister — are making their way through life in the big, crowded, smelly, loud city. And what do the Ederles do for fun? They sure like visits to Coney Island, but swimming? For the women? The girls? They don’t swim! That’s indecent!
But when Trudy’s feminist-coded mother Gertrud (Jeanette Hain) witnesses a heartbreaking ferry accident (one that seems to be loosely based on the 1904 General Slocum Disaster, which was indeed heartbreaking, even if not precisely placed on the literal timeline) in which hundreds of women died because they couldn’t swim, she makes a crazy choice: her girls are going to learn. General sexism isn’t the only thing standing in young Trudy’s way, there’s also the measles, which she catches as a kiddo (younger Trudy is played by Olivia Abercrombie), much to the terror of her entire family.
Trudy nearly dies one long night, a story that is openly mythologized — as is much of the film, from “the night Trudy almost died of measles” to “the story about how she had to shovel coal to prove her worth to her first WSA coach,” the list goes on and on — but it does help hammer home just how much the Ederles had to endure on a daily basis. Once Trudy and older sister Meg (played by Lilly Aspell as a child, Tilda Cobham-Hervey as a young adult) start swimming lessons, things are only marginally better.
The girls are confined to a tiny, roped-off area of the local pool. Strokes? Eh, maybe one or two. Rønning’s visuals might not be subtle, but they’re materially true. And, emotionally, they work. Soon enough, Trudy, who is presented here as someone who simply loved swimming, takes matters into her own hands: she starts swimming in the ocean. It’s a fitting and fun role for Ridley, who is always at her best when tackling plucky characters, and Trudy is all pluck (and, thankfully, a generous dose of natural talent).
As Trudy and Meg grow up, Trudy’s stature in the swimming world grows, while Meg becomes more concerned with out-of-the-water issues (romance, keeping the family happy). One of the film’s most delicate touches concerns the sisters’ relationship, which cycles gracefully through camaraderie and competition and back again, and feels rooted in realism and emotion, unlike some of the film’s bigger swings. That element — plus period-appropriate costumes and locations, this thing looks like a million Roaring Twenties bucks — helps the film chug along, even when Nathanson and Stout’s screenplay stars to veer off-course.
Eventually, Trudy makes it to the Olympics (Meg does not), but after being saddled with a coach (Christopher Eccleston, really chewing it up) more interested in female decorum than actual practice, Trudy and the rest of the team come up short. Back in America, Trudy won’t be daunted, and she sets her sights on a different stripe of swimming accomplishment: she wants to become the first woman to swim across the English Channel. If it sounds like it took awhile to get there, it certainly did, but Rønning pumps up his last act with enough full-force adventure and can-do spirit that it’s worth the wait.
It’s also worth the timeline liberties that Nathanson and Stout take with Trudy’s big swim, which they compress down into a few wild, woolly weeks on France’s Cape Gris-Nez (and, of course, the channel itself). In reality, Trudy Eberle did need two attempts at her swim, a full year apart, though that’s something fans of the film will have to learn after it wraps up (instead, we’re meant to believe Trudy’s two swims were mere days apart).
It’s a minor quibble, and a choice that’s to be expected from most biopics. It’s also one that doesn’t rankle so much here, mostly because the real Ederle accomplished so much, it’s hard to imagine cramming it all into one tidy feature. The one we’ve got? It’s good enough, rousing enough, compelling enough. More jellyfish, too.
Grade: B-
Walt Disney Pictures will release “Young Woman and the Sea” in theaters on Friday, May 31.
