Here are our picks for the best coming-of-age films centering on female characters.
Watching their love story play out is at times angsty, at times heartbreaking, and altogether inevitable.A.H.
But the movie’s central tragedy and a defining moment in Vada’s life is all about Thomas J.
Lana Condor in ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’; Saoirse Ronan in ‘Lady Bird’; Gabourey Sidibe in ‘Precious’.Credit:Masha Weisberg/Netflix; A24/courtesy Everett Collection; Lions Gate/Courtesy Everett Collection
(Macaulay Culkin).
That’s exactly what you get when you watch this coming-of-age drama.
Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood in ‘Thirteen’.Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight
Saoirse Ronan in ‘Lady Bird’.Merie Wallace/A24
Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan in ‘Love & Basketball’.S. Baldwin/New Line Cinema
Thora Birch and Christina Ricci in ‘Now and Then’.Everett Collection
Macaulay Culkin and Anna Chlumsky in ‘My Girl’.Everett Collection
Gabourey Sidibe in ‘Precious’.Anne Marie Fox/Lionsgate
Molly Ringwald and Michael Schoeffling in ‘Sixteen Candles’.Everett Collection
Kirsten Dunst in ‘The Virgin Suicides’.Paramount Pictures
Elliot Page and Michael Cera in ‘Juno’.Doane Gregory/Fox Searchlight
Keira Knightley in ‘Pride & Prejudice’.Everett Collection
Cher in ‘Mermaids’.Everett Collection
The cast of ‘Crooklyn’.Everett Collection
Hailee Steinfeld in ‘The Edge of Seventeen’.Murray Close
Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard in ‘An Education’.Kerry Brown/Sony Pictures Classics
(From left to right) America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel, and Blake Lively in ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’.Diyah Pera/Warner Bros.
Emory Cohen and Saoirse Ronan in ‘Brooklyn’.Kerry Brown/Fox Searchlight/Courtesy Everett Collection
Lana Condor in ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’.Masha Weisberg/Netflix
Julie Andrews, Hector Elizondo, and Anne Hathaway in ‘The Princess Diaries’.Mary Evans/WALT DISNEY PICTURES/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection
(Clockwise from upper left) Saoirse Ronan, Laura Dern, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlan in ‘Little Women’.Wilson Webb/Columbia Pictures
Elsie Fisher in ‘Eighth Grade’.Linda Kallerus/A24
