Truly Ederle was a sickly girl (Olive Abercrombie) not long for this world, but defying all odds she recovered from her bout with measles and when she was grown (Daisy Ridley), she defied all odds again by being the first woman to swim across the English Channel in 1926.  Her remarkable story was of course marred with roadblocks by people who did not believe a woman could do the same physical feats that a man could do, but she took that criticism and skepticism and let it fuel her across her trying journey of 21 miles through choppy seas from France to England. 

Joachim Running directs The Young Woman and the Sea, a 129-minute historical drama that was originally destined for Disney+ but granted a limited theatrical run before its eventual debut on the platform.  It was written by Jeff Nathans who was adapting Glenn Stout’s 2009 novel chronicling the history-making swim.  With a pleasant enough performance by Ridley, the film fits well into the romanticized past that is often seen in Disney‘s dusty and inspiring period biopics, so while the film is pleasant enough in the moment and Ridley is delivering an inspiring performance, the film around her fails to meet her at the level which she is prepared to operate. As such, there are many instances where there feels to be a dramatic rift between the film that is almost certainly being dictated down to Running from the boardroom and the film the creative minds in front of behind the lens are seeking to tell. 

The film fits well into this specific vein of live-action Disney sports films that can help bridge younger audiences from the animated world of the Magic Kingdom and into live-action, adult stories on their own film-watching journeys.  The result is a story that does not dig too deeply into its characters or themes beyond the surface level and does not seek to push the limits of its PG rating.  Because of this, it makes sense that the film lends a sheen to the poverty of the characters where every piece of dust and dirt is meticulously placed to reflect the golden sunlight that peaks through the slats, creating perfect patterns across the walls and floors.  This is a common trope in these inspirational rags-to-riches adjacent stories, but the polish seems to get applied thicker and thicker each time it is brought out and this is a far cry from the romanticization of chimney sweeping as seen in Robert Stevenson’s Mary Poppins (1964).  Its prevalence has become a lazy shorthand in modern times, and while not exclusively adopted by Disney, they love this overly artificial look for this branch of their catalog. It is not an animated film, but it might as well be with all the layers added in post-production to the image.

Looking at Young Woman and the Sea more singularly than as part of a larger collection, the film boasts a pleasant enough sense of humor and charm that Ridley takes some time to find her footing with, but ultimately succeeds.  Her character comes alive when in the water, but is seldom allowed to be there so we spend most of our time with a frustrated and awkward character that pushes everyone around her, including us as the audience, away.  The film is also not particularly interested in dissecting the misogyny of this world more so than Oscar Faura’s lens capturing Ridley mulling over the disparity she just witnessed while Amelia Warner’s score tinkers away which is understandable that it does not want to get too bogged down in the social politics of the time, but it almost actively refuses to let Trudy respond.  This is more a fault of the script that does not really allow the story to prompt Trudy into growth, but rather builds her character through the work and commentary of the ensemble cast.  It is an odd choice that also extended to much of the action in the back half of the film while Trudy is swimming, and to be fair, following her in the water would make for a very solitary sequence so it makes sense to build more of the story with the team dynamics on the boat, but Nathans really does not give Ridley much to do here at all.  The film takes about 40 minutes to lay out its exposition, does not really become fun until about the 70-minute mark, and not until the 90-minute mark do we catch up to the cold open.  It is a very long process, especially for a film targeted towards such a young age. 

Nathans also follows a very churning structure circling back and forth between the same few locations, story beats, and character moments before starting the process over again.  It feels almost like it wanted to be a limited series with how quickly it jumps from one chapter to the next and almost certainly there are pages of material that are in the waste bin that would have helped to smooth these transitions out, but it is unlikely that Disney wanted to pay for another draft before sending what originated as a straight to streaming title into production.  Because all of that interstitial material was cut, the story feels impossibly fantastic as every scene is so clearly foreshadowing what will happen in the next scene and nothing has a chance to build because everything is paid off immediately.  Purely speculatively, these pacing issues may not lie solely on Nathans’ shoulders but nonetheless are present in the product that he delivers. 

It is both impossible and unfair to put The Young Woman and the Sea up against either Nyad (2023), a Netflix biopic following Diana Nyad’s crossing from Cuba to Florida, or The Boys in the Boat (2023), an MGM golden hour shot biopic of the rags to riches 1936 US Olympic Rowing team, but coming out all within such close quarters, the similarities are hard to shake.  What all three do, though, is they highlight the fortitude it takes to overcome a challenge as massive and as powerful as the sea itself, and they each spin an inspirational story.  Some stronger filmmaking in Young Woman and the Sea would provide a more nuanced account of the struggle that Trudy overcame in accomplishing her feat, especially in her first attempt, but the pacing and structure improve for the finale and the film wraps up neatly for those who are determined to see it through its over two-hour runtime.