Review: In ‘Young Woman and the Sea,’ a true story of perseverance gets the epic treatment

After distance swimmer Trudy Ederle swam the English Channel in 1926, she had the biggest parade for an athlete in New York City — ever. As the first woman to swim the channel, she effectively paved the way for the future of women’s sports. So why isn’t she more of a household name? The new biopic “Young Woman and the Sea” seeks to change that, re-establishing Ederle as a world-changing icon.

This rousing sports biopic is a throwback to the kinds of inspiring underdog stories we love, like “Rudy” but with a girl-power feminist bent and a woman-against-nature theme. Daisy Ridley plays the sunnily determined Trudy, and the film is filled with a supporting cast of charming characters who offer pops of humor and heart. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, it’s a triumphant, emotional sports movie akin to his “Remember the Titans” and “Glory Road.”

Norwegian director Joachim Rønning tackles Trudy’s life story with a script by Jeff Nathanson, adapted from the 2009 account “Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World” by Glenn Stout. (Rønning and co-director Espen Sandberg also made the oceanic adventure film “Kon-Tiki,” which could have been titled “Young Men and the Sea.”) These filmmakers clearly have a knack for capturing nautical adventure and the delusional yet undeniably human desire to conquer the seas.

But plunge below the surface, and there’s so much more to this story than just that of a strong young woman who completed an incredibly dangerous and challenging feat of athleticism and mental fortitude against all odds. While she’s stroking across the channel, there’s an ingenious subplot that speaks to larger ideas and movements that are animated by Trudy’s story. Boats filled with reporters chase after her, tossing back bottles filled with their missives written on slips of paper, which are fished out of the water and attached to messenger pigeons that deliver them to a French hotel in Cap Gris-Nez and read aloud, then reported via telegram to radio stations around the world, who broadcast the news all the way back to Trudy’s anxious family in New York City. This isn’t just the story of a young woman doing the seemingly impossible — it’s a mass media story taking place in a newly globalized world that’s collectively listening with bated breath.

From left, Jeanette Hain, Daisy Ridley and Kim Bodnia in the movie “Young Woman and the Sea.”

(Vladisav Lepoev / Disney)

That representational burden is a continually simmering undercurrent in “Young Woman and the Sea.” Trudy knows it’s her visibility that will change the world, not just the simple act of swimming the channel. Her coach, Jabez Wolffe (Christopher Eccleston), pushed upon her by her sponsor, James Sullivan (Glenn Fleshler), forces her to diet, concerned with how she’ll look in photographs; her two-piece swimsuit, redesigned for comfort, causes a sensation among the French press. But it’s her stardom that makes her a hero to the young girls who ask for her autograph among the crowds of journalists, and has the potential to change the trajectory of women’s sports.

Trudy’s swim inspires the whole world, including her hometown of New York City, the tenement buildings filled with immigrants listening to her journey on the radio. It’s a reminder of how we are compelled by narratives of human striving and triumph. From Sunday football to the Olympic Games, collectively watching and sharing these stories knits us together. The Paris Olympics this summer are, in fact, the centennial anniversary of the Games in which Trudy competed in 1924.

The broad storytelling calls back to a kind of retro filmmaking based on pure sensation and emotion, in which we cheer for the heroes and jeer for the villains. There isn’t a whole lot of nuance in some of the characterizations. Eccleston and Fleshler essentially play dastardly mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash types, their characters’ nakedly evil motivations for sabotaging Trudy unexplored. But not all men who are threatened by her endeavor. She wins over other swimmers with her moxie, including iconic channel swimmer Bill Burgess (a standout Stephen Graham), who eventually coaches her.

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Among the terrific supporting characters are Trudy’s German immigrant parents, with Danish actor Kim Bodnia playing Trudy’s father, a gruff, protective but ultimately supportive butcher, and German actor Jeanette Hain, who nearly steals the whole movie as Trudy’s steely, ethereal mother Gertrud. She insists that her girls, Trudy and her sister, Meg (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), learn to swim in the wake of a steamboat tragedy in which hundreds of women died, saying that her daughters will never “stand on a burning ship.” But Gertrud also discovers that empowering them leads to glories — and dangers — she never imagined.

There is an old-fashioned yet modern beauty and grandeur to Rønning’s style here, which is meticulously produced and costume-designed, and shot with sweeping, epic camera movements by Oscar Faura, yet edited with a swift narrative efficiency by Úna Ní Dhonghaíle. Set to a triumphal score by Amelia Warner, there’s a hint of Bruckheimer’s “Pirates of the Caribbean”-style jauntiness to the powerful orchestration that adds to the sense of melodrama at play.

Ultimately, this is a tale of one young woman and the sea, and it’s Trudy’s experience that Ridley capably inhabits. Take away all the reporters, the doubters, the concerned family members, the coaches, her beloved sister and everyone watching around the world. In the dark of night it’s just Trudy, alone in the ocean, and that story of determination is worth celebrating and remembering.