Young Woman and the Sea Movie Review

This film is based on the book of the same name, written by Glenn Stout and published in 2009. I, for one, am glad it was written. The movie is about a young swimmer named Trudy Ederle who had big dreams and, lucky for all women who play sports today, wouldn’t give up on them. ​

Some countries already had females involved in sports. The United States would have eventually come around to allowing women to officially compete in athletics. Still, Trudy gave this country a nudge in the right direction to permit it sooner than they would have.

Her mother hears on the news that hundreds of women died on a ship that caught on fire. Why women? Because women weren’t allowed to swim. They’re fragile things that might get sick if they pursued any exercise, even though the queen bee and the lioness are two examples of durable females. Since they couldn’t jump and save themselves, they drowned instead. This hits her mother hard for a reason I won’t tell you here.

Because of this catastrophe, she asks her husband to enroll the girls in swimming lessons. He laughs, reminding her that such an arrangement is not possible because it’s indecent. “What will people say?”

When the movie opens, a young Trudy, played spectacularly by Daisy Ridley, known for playing “Rey” in several “Star Wars” films, stands before the ocean and looks out, ready to defeat the sea at any level. Because of her strength and determination to beat the odds, I’m surprised I’ve never heard of Ederle. Have you? She swam the English Channel, which had beaten hundreds of people before, with only five men to successfully swim the channel before she attempted.

Her crack made the news, with people like Babe Ruth predicting if she’d make it or not.

She had twenty-nine US national and World Records. She won gold in 1924 at the Olympics, but there needed to be a more significant challenge. She swam twenty-two miles from New York to New Jersey, setting a record that stood for eighty-one years. In 1926, Trudy Ederle, determined to prove her worth, showed the naysayers she could do more. She became the first woman to swim the 350-mile English Channel, which had jellyfish that stung her and outrageously intense currents that threatened to pull her out to sea, in complete darkness no less. She completed the swim in fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes.

It’s projected that the shallows, a sand bar that shields England’s shores, will be her biggest challenge, but she makes it and breaks the men’s record by two hours. She did this under the direction of the famous men’s swimmer of the time named Bill Burgess, played by Stephen Graham (Snatch, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Boardwalk Empire, The Irishman). His character was outrageous enough and dead set on her finishing the race… the someone she needed on her side who would let her continue no matter what.

The movie is very entertaining, especially seeing the sexism of the day on full display. Let’s not go in that direction. With people against her everywhere she turned, even though things didn’t always go swimmingly, the woman wins in the end. Trudy was passionate and profound and so were the relationships in her life. Something that helps make this a movie not to miss is the incredibly moving score by Amelia Warner (Mr. Malcolm’s List). It was gorgeous. Also, the cinematography by Oscar Faura (The Impossible, The Imitation Game) can only be described as exceptional. You get so much from every location he shot in and the skill that was used to present each scene. The film’s ending is pure gold (haha) for the Queen of the Waves… and stay for some stats directly after the film. Sorry. I didn’t stay to see if there was anything after the credits, but I haven’t heard there was.