Movie Review: Young Woman and the Sea (Disney+)

By John Corrado

The latest inspirational sports movie from Disney, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Young Woman and the Sea is based on the true story of pioneering female swimmer Trudy Ederle, who became the first woman to swim across the 21 mile English Channel in 1926.

Daisy Ridley (who most notably played Rey in the Disney Star Wars movies) stars as Ederle, with the film taking us through her early years as the daughter of working class German immigrants in Manhattan, who learns to swim around the Coney Island pier and eventually competes at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

The early scenes show Trudy as a spirited young girl (played by Olive Abercrombie), who survives a bad case of measles, and is determined to swim despite warnings from doctors that getting water in her ears could make her go deaf. Trudy’s loving but more traditional father Henry (Kim Bodnia), the local butcher, also needs some warming up to the idea of girls learning how to swim.

But mother Gertrude (Jeanette Hain) insists that she will learn, and gets Trudy and her older sister Meg (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) on an all-female swimming team coached by taciturn feminist Lottie Epstein (Sian Clifford). This leads to Trudy qualifying for the Olympics, where she is denied adequate training time by her arrogant coach Jabez Wolffe (Christopher Eccleston). James Sullivan (Glenn Fleshler), who sponsors the American women’s swimming team, also expects them to follow a number of strict rules so as not to improperly fraternize with the male athletes.

This is all to show the barriers faced by women at the time, adding another layer of adversity to Trudy’s journey to swim across the English Channel, a feat that had previously only been attempted by a select few men. Sullivan reluctantly agrees to back Trudy’s attempt, on the condition that she does so under Wolffe, who is bitter over his own unsuccessful attempts at swimming across the channel. But Trudy finds an unlikely mentor in Bill Burgess (Stephen Graham), the eccentric English swimmer whose successful crossing of the channel helped inspire her.

It might seem backhanded to call Young Woman and the Sea a “nice” movie, but it’s meant purely as a compliment. This is an inspirational true story that is tastefully and respectfully told onscreen, with screenwriter Jeff Nathanson successfully turning author Glenn Stout’s non-fiction book of the same name into a feel-good Disney sports movie about overcoming adversity.

If this approach might feel somewhat safe, it also seems like the right one for Trudy’s story, with her against-all-odds victory serving itself well as the basis for a triumphant, family-friendly crowdpleaser. While the story’s outcome is hardly in doubt, the film still manages to wring some drama out of Trudy’s voyage, with Ridley turning her into an easy to root for protagonist. Despite looking too old in the earlier scenes when playing her as a teenager, Ridley is quite good in the role, and adds the right level of pluck and determination to her portrayal of Ederle.

Directed by Joachim Rønning (Kon-Tiki, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), Young Woman and the Sea is an attractive, old fashioned picture. Óscar Faura’s widescreen cinematography captures the expansive waters that our heroine is trying to cross, matched by a gently rousing musical score by composer Amelia Warner. This is a film that is meant to inspire audiences of all ages, and it reliably does just that.

Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)