Young Woman and the Sea

Available on Disney+

With the Olympics recently ending and the Paralympics starting soon, Disney’s release of this Gertrude Ederle biopic is well-timed. Ederle, the first woman to swim across the English Channel, is one of the most influential female athletes of all time and her inspiring life story deserves widespread recognition.

Unfortunately, Joachim Rønning’s Young Woman and the Sea is a bland recounting of Ederle’s heroics that is burdened by underdeveloped feminist themes and a frustratingly foreseeable screenplay.

This is unfortunate as Daisy Ridley’s lead performance as Ederle is solid, as is the work of a supporting cast that includes two British small-screen legends in Christopher Eccleston and Stephen Graham. Sadly, even when actors as talented as these are working with material as saturated as Jeff Nathanson’s screenplay then the end result is always likely to be underwhelming.

There is not even a smidgen of tension during the film’s indulgent runtime, with both Rønning and Nathanson adopting the straightjacketed approach to storytelling that is so often associated with this type of Disney picture. At no point do we seriously believe Ederle will do anything other than accomplish her goal, which flies in the face of the adversity she would have actually endured as a woman attempting to succeed in a male-dominated sport.

Subsequently, one can only wonder what sort of film Young Woman and the Sea might have been if entrusted to a female director and/or writer, given that they would presumably be far better placed to understand and interpret the hardships Ederle and other women like her are made to endure.