I will say that Lady Bird is a really, really good film...but I honestly think The Edge of Seventeen did the modern coming of age so, so much better.
I don't see the need to compare the two. More than one can exist, and they speak to extremely different thematic points.
Bondo! Didn't you know?!?!?! WE CAN ONLY HAVE ONE COMING OF AGE COMEDY ABOUT A TEENAGE GIRL WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY A WOMAN PER DECADE!!!!! Get with it bruh.
I hope this is being looked at as a joke response. Sometimes, it's hard to tell with all the capitalization.
Edge of Seventeen honestly isn't a film that occupies too much real estate in my brain, but as I was watching Lady Bird there was a sense of having watched a film that tackles similar issues recently. With the generous participation of Saoirse Ronan I expected better and from Greta Gerwig I hoped for better. Instead I got something closer to equal, but with a east coast sensibility. It's Easy A for people that liked Frances Ha.
Oof.
While different thematically and having a much closer storyline to my own life that I thought I might sympathise with better, it bounced off of me. Even though I'm male, my relationship with my parents is much more similar to Lady Bird, my education path was similar, and even the social echoes, but it never rang true of the teenage experience. Edge of Seventeen didn't have any parables that I could relate to, but I feel it captured the teenage frustration in a much better way; Lady Bird feels like it has very little repercussions for those characters' futures while having them stay very placid, while Edge had a growth for characters that mirrored the situation.
As far as comparing two contemporary films directed by women, about women coming of age with tumultuous family and social issues, it's hardly an attempt to minimalise women's roles within film. I think I maybe watched the first ten minutes of Dazed and Confused this year and that might be the only other "coming of age" film that I watched in the last twelve months since Edge of Seventeen, so I'm not sure what else I should use as my reference point? I don't see how comparing it to, say, The Shape of Water because they have a tenuous thematic link via feminine sexuality because they're both in theatres and were directed by opposite genders helps, because they're two entirely different films.
But hey, that's just my opinion, and because this is the internet, saying that I preferred something over the other means that Lady Bird is totally and utterly invalidated and obviously a gigantic piece of shit.
(For what it's worth, on Letterboxd I have both Lady Bird and Edge of Seventeen at 4 stars and think Lady Bird is a fine film; certainly Gerwig's better example of writing considering how much I disliked Frances Ha, the understated direction is really, really assured, and the performances are great. It didn't resonate with me personally, though, but apparently that's enough to paint me as sexist and invalidate my opinion?)