Young Woman and the Sea tells the true story of how Trudy Ederle (Daisy Ridley) overcame the extraordinary sexism of the 1920s to follow her dreams of swimming across the English Channel, a feat achieved only by five men at the time, and no women.
Young Woman and the Sea
Joachim Rønning (Director), Jeff Nathanson (Screenplay), Glenn Stout (Novel), Oscar Faura (Cinematographer), Úna Ní Dhonghaíle (Editor)
Daisy Ridley, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Stephen Graham, Kim Bodnia, Jeanette Hain, Sian Clifford, Christopher Eccleston (cast)
July 19, 2024
In Young Woman and the Sea, Trudy Ederle, the daughter of German immigrants to America, insists on becoming a swimmer, despite girls not being encouraged to swim. Ederle was also dissuaded from swimming due to hearing loss caused by a childhood bout with measles. But nothing gets in Ederle’s way—she annoys her father till he agrees to show her how to swim. When Ederle and her older sister, Meg (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), show aptitude for the sport, their mother, Gertrud (Jeanette Hain), further encourages them to practice and compete. While Meg starts stronger, Trudy overtakes her during their teen years and is subsequently selected for the American Olympic team. When the Olympic adventure fails, Trudy attempts to become the first woman to swim across the English Channel, a treacherous 21-mile stretch of water known for incredibly high waves, strong currents, jellyfish, and sharks. That’s not mentioning the last few miles that are so dark and shallow that swimmers must go it alone.
I received a screener of Young Woman and the Sea from Disney. I had mixed feelings about 2023’s Nyad, also a true story of a long-distance swimmer, but I’ve always had a fondness for sports films, so Young Woman and the Sea seemed right up my alley. I must add that until I got the screener request from Disney, I hadn’t actually heard of this film. I’m not sure what it is about film marketing these days; it feels like so many films just come and go without many people hearing about them.
Comparisons to Nyad will be inevitable so let me get those out of the way. While Nyad had strong performances from two veterans of Hollywood, it felt formulaic, and the pacing was off. Young Woman and the Sea does not have the veteran actors to carry it—more on that later—but it’s a film that manages to rise above its feel-good status to be engaging and touching. The pacing was much better than I expected. Scenes flow quickly, giving viewers the requisite information and emotion before moving on to the next plot point. The film gives sufficient weightage to emotional moments but knows that viewers really just want to get to the swimming, so it moves the story along to the events in the English Channel.
Part of the reason why the pacing felt right to me was that Young Woman and the Sea knew how to build up the Ederle family, as well as the circumstances that Meg and Trudy are trapped within. The linear structure also helped—sometimes, films can just be a story about how one thing happens after another. You don’t need to throw in flashbacks, dream sequences, or long monologues. Just let the story tell itself. The film’s linear storytelling, and its focus on the Ederle family, especially in the first two acts, sometimes meant that star Daisy Ridley, also an executive producer, wasn’t in the spotlight. This turned out to be a good decision—Trudy’s drive was shaped by the people around her and the circumstances of being a young woman in the 1920s. Also, the early decades of the 20th century now are a really long time in the past. A refresher is needed for just how high the stakes were for Ederle—her failures could have damaged not just women in sports, but women’s freedoms, as well.
While the film does a good job of showcasing the Ederle family dynamics, other areas of Ederle’s life don’t get the same attention. I would have liked to know how Ederle and her fellow Olympians got along, but the rest of Ederle’s team are merely in the background. Her only other significant relationship in the film is her friendship with fellow channel swimmer Benji (Alexander Karim), an original character created for Young Woman and the Sea. But it felt rushed to me. The first time they meet, he’s arguing with her about whether a woman should be swimming the channel. Ederle takes a big glug of his beer and in the next scene, they’re rooting for each other. I understand in film logic the shared beer indicated the start of a friendship, but it would have been nice to see more of how their relationship developed.
I was excited by the appearance of Benji, though, as he was the sole Black swimmer to attempt the channel swim in this film. I thought it was cool that at the time Ederle was attempting to make and break records, there was a Black swimmer also attempting to do the same. I was disappointed to learn that Benji was fictionalized but considering his lack of interiority and the fact that he appears merely as a prop to Ederle, rather than a full-fledged character in his own right, should have been dead giveaways. While it is great to see a person of colour in a period film, I would have much preferred if real people of colour in the 1920s had been spotlighted in this true story.
Benji being fictional sent me down a rabbit hold to find what else in Young Woman and the Sea may not have been historically accurate, and there are a few moments that have been fictionalized. Ederle apparently didn’t escape from the porthole of a ship to make her second attempt across the English Channel. Ederle’s antagonistic relationship with her male coach, Jabez Wolffe (Christopher Eccleston), as portrayed in the film was clearly artistic license. Though it was reported that Wolffe didn’t get along with Ederle, there is no inkling that he spiked her tea during her swim—in reality, Wolffe pulled Ederle out of the swim sooner than she had wanted. But the drama of these scenes reflected the sexist intentions of the time, so I’ll give the fictionalization a pass. Women had only just got the vote—many men didn’t want them entering sports, let alone see them dominate sporting areas in which men had died trying, so the drama needed to be reiterated here.
While the historical inaccuracies may bother some, I did enjoy how Young Woman and the Sea captured the technology of the time. As Ederle swims from France to England, news of her exploits was shared over the still-new telephone, the wireless telegraph, radio, and even carrier pigeons. Those scenes were particularly enjoyable to watch. We’ve come so far in terms of technology, but humanity’s fascination with following sporting feats is timeless. I did feel that some of the ways the crowds were cheering and applauding felt anachronistic—were people doing fist pumps in the air in the ‘20s?
The prop and set details of Young Woman and the Sea were a highlight but not as much as the cinematography, which is stunning. I don’t know whether this film used much CGI or green screen because it felt like the actors were actually in the open seas. Location shooting makes films feel so much more real; the actors can interact with the elements around them. There’s a scene where Ederle encounters a huge school of jellyfish that was breathtaking—I’d love to know how they shot it because I’m assuming they didn’t shove a bunch of angry jellyfish at Ridley. It was a very tactile scene that had me wincing out loud in commiseration with Ederle.
Most of the stylistic choices in this film made sense. Except for the music. There were a few scenes where the music felt intrusive, such as when Ederle boarded the ship for the ill-fated 1924 Olympics. It was too loud and celebratory when Ederle herself was a bit melancholic about her sister, Meg, not being offered a spot on the team. However, during Ederle’s channel swim, the music was on point. There’s a scene near the end showcasing human solidarity that strongly affected me, largely because of the musical choices. It was subtle and built to a crescendo just as the audience witnessed a positive twist. Not sure why the Olympic ship scene got it so wrong.
I know I’ve mentioned that Young Woman and the Sea doesn’t have acting heavyweights, but Daisy Ridley is joyful in the role of Trudy Ederle. She captures the naiveté of a teenager who isn’t yet burdened with society’s expectations of women, while also demonstrating Ederle’s determination to achieve her dreams, no matter the costs. I also think Ridley did a great job with her accent. I almost forgot she was British.
While Ridley and Tilda Cobham-Hervey demonstrate the sisterly chemistry that powers Young Woman and the Sea, Cobham-Hervey takes time to settle into her role. There are two halves to her performance. In the first half of the film, Cobham-Hervey comes across as wooden and unsure of how to portray Meg’s despondence at her lot in life. But in the latter part of the film, when Meg has renewed purpose, Cobham-Hervey comes alive. Her face becomes much more expressive, showing Meg’s concern, joy, and resolve as she encourages her younger sister to keep pushing on through the English Channel.
For a film that I hadn’t even heard of, I ended up being captivated by Young Woman and the Sea. I’m glad I got the chance to see it. Though labelled as ‘feel-good’, this film is more than that. It’s a reminder of how far women’s sports has come, and how much bigotry we’ve had to wade through to get here. But this film also highlights how we’re facing much the same problems today—most women in sports don’t earn the same as men playing the same sports; there are unreasonable restrictions put on women’s clothes; many female athletes have been pressured to starve to look good, rather than play well; and there’s the unnecessary debate about trans people playing sports when that conversation has less to do with biology and more to do with bigotry. People should watch this film and celebrate the achievements of Trudy Ederle, but we cannot sit back on the laurels of the past. There’s still more work to be done.
