Review: Little Women (no spoilers)

I love Greta Gerwig.

Not romantically. Not in any way outside of knowing her a little, having felt her energy for a few hours over a few years in my life, and also seeing her work.

You may think this gives her an unfair advantage over me as a film critic. And in a few ways, it does. I don’t want to write about the work she has done that I don’t like very much. I am very uncomfortable saying anything negative about the work of the man whose child she bore. It hasn’t stopped me from saying my piece when it is time to do so, but I am as conscious of hurting her feelings as I am that she would either not care at all or forgive me instantly.

I tell you this as a preface because the experience of sitting in the theater, watching Little Women, which also stars someone else I love the way I love Greta, because what I felt for most of the two-hour-and-twenty-minute running time was Greta’s energy. I saw the movie. I admired words and images and performances. But what I felt, overwhelmingly, from …