I don't know what I'm going to do when Saoirse Ronan is too old to play high schoolers.

How the hell do you effectively review a film like Lady Bird? It's about as difficult as reviewing Greta Gerwig's body of work as an actor. She takes all of her experience as an actor, particularly the scattershot collection of moments we see from her in Frances Ha, and effectively distills it into her debut as a director.

Lady Bird is an intimidating piece of work that usually only comes from the most experienced auteur film makers, with the scattershot style of Frances Ha that yet, somehow, comes together in a singular vision that is difficult to extrapolate in a brief review after a single viewing. Imagine Boyhood, except taking place over the course of just one year, instead of twelve, but there's a stronger focus behind the eclectic array of memories, instead of simply depicting an array of relatable events. Lady Bird still retains all of the adolescent relatability in the scenes depicted throughout Boyhood, but what Boyhood lacked, that Lady Bird contains, is a central "thesis." It centers around a complicated high school senior girl's relationship with her mother, and every scene in one way or another, even in its most subtle details, builds around that central theme, even if it doesn't appear to be doing so on the surface.

That's all I can really review at this moment. As I mentioned earlier, these kinds of movies are difficult to fully review on a single viewing. Lady Bird is densely packed with moments and scenes, each of which are a range of funny and compelling, and each of which come together to make up the film's overarching vision, and experiencing it is essential.