Young Woman and the Sea review – beautiful 1920s swimming biopic | Drama films

Yese wait years for a moving feminist endurance swimming drama, then two come along 12 months apart. Young woman and the sea stars Daisy Ridley as Gertrude (Trudy) Ederle, the courageous New York butcher’s daughter who, in 1926, became the first woman to swim the English Channel. It follows Nyadstarring Annette Bening as Diana Nyad, who swam from Cuba to Florida in 2013 at the age of 64.

What we learn from watching both in relatively quick succession is that there are only a limited number of ways for directors to inject tension into the inherently monotonous act of plowing the ocean for hours. The peril of jellyfish features prominently in both films, as do untreated childhood trauma. In Ederle’s case, having a brush with death as a young child battling measles meant that she was later treated as the runt of the family, and later as her all-member swim team. girls.

The prestige trappings – the 1920s New York and Brooklyn neighborhoods where the story takes place are beautifully recreated – go some way to winning over audiences, as does Ridley’s energetic and likeable turn. But Young woman and the seaadapted from a book of the same name by Glenn Stout, is laboriously formulaic and takes a few too many wacky dramatic liberties (the film shows her emerging from the porthole of an ocean liner and diving, luggage and all, into the sea in order to to retry crossing the Channel).