Young Woman and the Sea (2024)

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I’m not a sports person at all, so I didn’t know anything about Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. What did I think of Young Woman and the Sea? Read on to find out!

And remember, SPOILERS AHEAD!

Directed by Joachim Rønning, the film begins with a flashback to New York City in the early 1910s wherein young Trudy Ederle, played by Olive Abercrombie, lives with her German family. Her father, Henry, played by Kim Bodnia, works as a butcher, while her mother, Gertrude, played by Jeanette Hain, takes care of the house plus takes on sewing projects later in life. She also has an elder sister, Meg, and a brother, Henry Jr.

From a young age, Trudy has shown interest in swimming. Her father is against it at first, because apparently women swimming is seen as improper, but Trudy’s insistence (along with some stern persuading by Gertrude), he agrees to teach Trudy how to swim. Meg also learns how to swim.

When Trudy and Meg get older (and are now played by Daisy Ridley and Tilda Cobham-Hervey, respectively), they join a local girl’s swimming team trained by a woman named Charlotte, played by Sian Clifford. Their father is against this at first again, but again Gertrude sternly insists and signs the girls up with Charlotte.

They both perform very well and even win local swimming matches. Trudy is the better swimmer of the two though, which leads to some tension between them. This is especially apparent when a man named James Sullivan, played by Glenn Fleshler, is trying to bring women swimmers to the 1924 Olympics, but he only wants Trudy. This hurts Meg deeply and Trudy has to remind her that they’re sisters and will always be together no matter what.

Trudy ends up going to Paris for the Olympics aboard a ship where she and the other female swimmers are being taken care of by their trainer, Jabez Wolffe, played by Christopher Eccleston. However, he doesn’t give them any training time aboard the ship and as a result, Trudy only wins bronze medals. She returns home dejected.

It’s not long afterwards though that Trudy gets the idea to swim the English Channel after becoming aware of an English swimmer, Bill Burgess, played by Stephen Graham, who did just that.

She tries to convince Mr. Sullivan to sponsor her, but he has no intention to do so especially after her Olympics performance. He’s also in a hurry to go to New Jersey to have dinner with his mother. Trudy makes a bet with him that if she can swim from there to New Jersey in three hours, he will have to sponsor her. He agrees to this and is very much surprised when she manages to do it!

Mr. Wolffe is hired to be her trainer again and they head to France. He doesn’t really have much faith that she can swim the English Channel (as he himself has failed to do so multiple times) nor does he really desire for her to do so. As she attempts the swim, she starts off well, but gets disoriented about six miles in and has to be pulled from the water.

While recuperating, she’s approached by Mr. Burgess who wants to know what happened. They realize that she felt disoriented only after drinking some tea given to her by Mr. Wolffe, so they assume he tried to poison her to sabotage her efforts. Her father and sister have also come to France to take her back home, but Mr. Burgess instead offers to train her for a second attempt. They agree to this while keeping it a secret from Mr. Wolffe and Mr. Sullivan.

Soon enough, we return to where the film began with Trudy getting ready to make her second attempt to swim the Channel with Mr. Burgess, her father, and her sister following alongside her in their boat. As she begins, word gets out and reporters are soon on the scene too covering the event.

She faces many challenges including leaking goggles, cold waters, jellyfish, and dangerous terrain, but in the end, she makes it to England where she’s greeted by Mr. Burgess, her father, her sister, and dozens of welcoming fans who have lit fires for her to see through the darkness.

A policeman even tries to deny her entry as she doesn’t have a passport, but nevertheless, she’s made the swim, becoming the first woman to do so! She returns home a hero and is given a ticker-tape parade, the biggest ever given to an athlete in the history of New York!

And that was Young Woman and the Sea! It’s a mixed bag for me. A lot of the performances were good, especially Daisy Ridley’s. But many of them were serviceable at best. There’s also a good number of actors performing in accents other than their own, but for the most part, you can’t tell.

I wasn’t fond of the pacing of this film and felt that it could have been tightened between the middle and the ending. I also wasn’t fond of learning that there were a good number of story elements that weren’t true. For example, Trudy Ederle actually did win gold during her Olympics performance, there’s no actual proof that Mr. Wolffe poisoned her on her first English Channel crossing attempt, and that her second attempt was over a year after her first.

I know that films “based on true stories” need to take some liberties to keep the film exciting, but I feel that all the untrue elements were where the character of Trudy Ederle in the film got her drive, so it just felt deceptive.

Also, I know the film is supposed to be inspirational to women and pro-female empowerment, but it also felt that every single man in the film was someone you were not supposed to cheer for! Like, besides her brother, I don’t think any other male character was shown to have any really good positive qualities. Or if they did, it was like their negative qualities outweighed their positive qualities.

I also have a personal pet peeve about Hollywood films that criticize arranged marriages. Coming from a culture where arranged marriages are common, I always felt that Hollywood films conflate arranged marriages with forced marriages and push the idea that the only valid love story that you can have is the type shown in romantic Hollywood films. I didn’t mention it earlier, but there are scenes in the film where Trudy and Meg’s parents are trying to set them up with matches and it’s just portrayed negatively. But this is just a pet peeve of mine that probably won’t bother others.

In the end, I felt that there was nothing amazing about Young Woman and the Sea. It wasn’t bad, but just nothing worth gushing about.

So, my final score for this film is 21/35 = 60% (D-) !

The next review will be posted on September 10, 2024.