You don’t have to be a swimmer to know the names Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky. The sad fact is that there were many great athletes in the sport breaking records – and tides – long before these two even existed. One such example is Trudy Ederle. If you don’t know her name, that’s about to change thanks to Walt Disney Studios’ new film Young Woman and the Sea.
Based on the novel of the same name by Glenn Stout, the film tells the incredible true tale of how Ederle became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Although the excruciating 21-mile long excursion is the focus, the film sets out to show that water wasn’t the only thing Ederle had to navigate in her life. In fact, her difficult journey started long before she even got her toes wet.
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The story starts at the dawn of the 20th century in New York City. A doctor arrives at one family’s house in the middle of the night to treat a young girl for measles. After a brief interaction with the girl, he tells the family that he does not believe she will make it to the morning. Surprisingly, she does. That young girl is Trudy.
Despite beating the disease, Trudy is advised to stay away from water. This doesn’t seem to be a problem until Trudy’s mother insists that the kids learn how to swim. Her reason being that at around the same time that Trudy catches measles, the real-life General Slocum steamboat disaster occurs in the East River. As a result, over a thousand of women and children die – all because they did not know how to swim. As Trudy’s brother and sister begin their lessons, she is forced to sit on the sidelines and take up another hobby: ukulele. But after purposefully using the instrument to annoy her parents, they quickly change their minds.
Years go by, Trudy gets older and she and her sister continue to swim. While they prefer to do it for fun, their mother has them join a local all-girls group hoping they can compete. It’s through this group that Trudy realizes her potential, improves her skills and wins local and national competitions. After breaking many world records as a competitive swimmer, she is chosen to represent America in the 1924 Olympics. Having been hailed as one of the world’s best swimmers until this point, she is devastated when she comes home from the event empty-handed. She remains in a small slump until one day she gets the idea to test her limits in a different way: by swimming in the English Channel.
The film transforms from a by-the-book biopic to an underdog epic. And the transition is seamless thanks to both Jeff Nathanson’s script and Úna Ni Dhonghaíle’s editing. Nathanson takes the book, which comprises a series of stories from Trudy’s life told in third person, and outlines the most important moments that prepared her for her conquest. As a result, no interaction is wasted. But the emphasis Nathanson particularly places on her relationships with the women in her life (her mother, her sister, her coach) especially add to the weight on her shoulders. With one of the film’s themes being the gender politics of sports, Trudy has to work at least twice as hard to get the same opportunities as male athletes. So if she succeeds, so do the females that helped her – and we feel that.
Ní Dhonghaíle, on the other hand, makes the film flow like the English Channel itself. The film is a bit challenging to wade through at times, but not because it’s hard to understand. It’s because of how tangible Trudy’s struggle is. But as Trudy beats on against the currents, so do we. And when she finally reaches the shore, we feel just as validated.
Joachim Rønning’s direction is also worth praising here. While he’s no stranger to telling stories that take place on the water (Kon-Tiki, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), there’s a certain fearlessness here that isn’t present in any of his previous works. Whether Trudy’s head is above the surface or sinking below, whether she’s breezing through the tides at record-breaking speeds or getting stung by jellyfish, we’re right there with her. If this daring exercise in immersion is any indication of how Rønning’s filmmaking skills have evolved, then moviegoers should be even more excited about his next project at Disney, Tron: Ares.
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In front of the camera, Daisy Ridley delivers her best performance to date as Ederle. After nearly a decade of breaking onto the scene in the Star Wars franchise, it feels like she is finally given a role she can really lose herself in. It’s not just that she successfully trades in her British accent for a New York one. She wears Ederle’s unwavering optimism proudly. This is surprisingly depicted best when she finally tells her family that she is going to cross the English Channel. Her father, who is painted to be her biggest nonbeliever throughout the film, immediately objects. To which she simply responds, “I wasn’t asking.” She may not play a character named Rey in this particular Disney film, but her confidence reigns supreme. Almost as if to teach us that a positive attitude and determination can defeat the Dark Side better than any lightsaber can.
Ridley’s surrounded by stellar company, including Stephan Graham and Christopher Eccleston. While they deliver truly memorable performances as Ederle’s eccentric mentor and antagonistic trainer respectively, lesser known co-stars Jeanette Hain, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, and Sian Clifford play the film’s more meaningful characters. They play Ederle’s aforementioned mother, sister and coach. Although they may not be directly acknowledged as such, they are Ederle’s support system. Each of them plays a role in her success. And although she does physically and emotionally get separated from each of them throughout the film, their ongoing belief in her acts as her unspoken guiding light.
But that separation also ties into arguably one of the film’s only cons. Throughout the third act, as Ederle is struggling to complete her swim, there is a bit too much emphasis on the reaction of everyone else who she has crossed paths with. For example, the film will cut from Eccleston’s character sitting at a bar, waiting for her to fail, to her mother rushing across town and storming NBC’s office to get real-time updates. And although it is interesting to see how her trek is affecting everyone else differently, it breaks up the pacing and ultimately distracts from what the entire film has been building up to. Still, that is not enough to stop the feeling of relief that washes over you when Ederle finally achieves her goal.
Young Woman and the Sea is no blockbuster, but that does not stop it from being an absolute crowd-pleaser. Like the best underdog stories, Trudy Ederle’s 14-hour and 31 minute trek is just as timeless. To be sure that other stories like hers don’t take decades – or near centuries – to be told, it’s imperative that audiences take the plunge. They will not regret it.
