Young Woman and the Sea review: Pure Hollywood fluff, but Daisy Ridley sells it

It may sound a little silly or slight to mention, but Disney’s Young Woman and the Sea is saved from the grim pedestrianism of the Hollywood biopic by a smile. It switches on, like a lightbulb in a dark basement, across the face of its star, Daisy Ridley. As an actor, Ridley hasn’t yet been able to capitalise on her role as Rey in the Star Wars movies in the way some might have hoped (which may partially explain why she was so easily coaxed back for a freshly announced sequel). But she’s achieved a real clarity about what she can offer as an actor. That’s a rare quality for a franchise veteran.

Ridley, and that smile of hers, can champion blunt determination and vigour with a kind of starry-eyed innocence. The actor’s turn as American swimmer Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, allows us to watch a sportsperson engaged in a self-punishing pursuit, not because she’s stirred on by the auspicious weight of destiny but because it brings her genuine joy.

Ederle grins as she sails past the competition and wins her first race, having miraculously recovered from a childhood bout of measles and defied her father (Kim Bodnia), who believes the sport is “indecent for girls”. She grins when Jabez Wolffe (Christopher Eccleston), the chauvinist swim coach assigned to monitor her Channel crossing, frantically waves a sign begging her to “slow down” (she won’t). It’s a choice that reflects something of the real Ederle, whose exploits were documented in Glenn Stout’s 2009 non-fiction book, and who liked to joke around with the grim-faced observers who populated the boats that travelled in her wake, telling them to keep their spirits up even as the weather turned.

In fact, there’s a general lack of self-seriousness in Jeff Nathanson’s script, and in Joachim Rønning’s direction, upended only in the moments when Ederle finds herself alone in the shallows off the English coast. Darkness encroaches, and the camera is left to bob hopelessly in the waves. But the human spirit will persist, and Amelia Warner’s traditional score will swell in response. Young Woman and the Sea is pure Hollywood fluff – but it’s hearty, wholesome fluff, of a kind that makes immediate sense once Jerry Bruckheimer’s name pops up in the credits as a producer.

With Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, Top Gun, and the Pirates of the Caribbean series all to his name, Bruckheimer has had a steady hand in shaping the past few decades of mainstream entertainment, and Young Woman and the Sea is, in that tradition, broadly and unfalteringly likeable. It’s no surprise the film’s straight-to-Disney+ release was upgraded to a cinematic one, with Bruckheimer claiming that it’s tested better with audiences than any other project he’s worked on.

Nathanson’s script pursues simplicity and sensationalism – Ederle’s father, who, in reality, was so close to his daughter that he promised her a red roadster if she successfully made it across the Channel, is here stern and reluctant. Her claim that Wolffe deliberately sabotaged her first attempt to cross makes him a convenient, conniving foil, contrasted against her pixieish second trainer, Bill Burgess (Stephen Graham), who’s introduced arriving on the shores of Coney Island butt-naked. An awkwardly underdeveloped fellow swimmer, played charismatically by Alexander Karim, seems to exist only so that the film can vaguely characterise Ederle’s rebellion as one against a distinctly white, male establishment.

The bigger focus here, certainly, is her relationship with other women: her sister Meg (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), her mother (Jeanette Hain), and her first swimming teacher, Charlotte Epstein (Sian Clifford). All of them are wilful and self-capable but witty, too, and not afraid to cause a little trouble. One look from Ederle’s mother can stop a man in his tracks. And, when Ederle tells her sister she wants to cross the Channel, her only reply is: “It sounds like fun.” Thanks to Ridley’s performance, the line actually sounds believable.

Dir: Joachim Rønning. Starring: Daisy Ridley, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Stephen Graham, Kim Bodnia, Christopher Eccleston, Glenn Fleshler. Cert PG, 129 mins

‘Young Woman and the Sea’ is in cinemas from 31 May