The 90th Academy Awards ceremony is taking place on March 4 and this year nine films have been selected for the much coveted Best Picture category. Among them is "Lady Bird," a gentle coming of age movie set in the early 2000s starring Saoirse Ronan as the titular Lady Bird, a high school senior from Sacramento, California, who wants to go to college in New York, much to the chagrin of her parents, especially her mother, with whom she has a turbulent relationship.

The film is directed by Greta Gerwig and it marks her first solo directorial project, following a co-directorial credit on the rom-com "Nights and Weekends" in 2008, and also makes her the first female director to be nominated for Best Picture since Kathryn Bigelow won in 2013 for "Zero Dark Thirty." Since she began her professional and romantic relationship with Noah Baumbach in 2010, Gerwig has been a fixture in the American indie scene, with accolades for acting coming for films such as "Frances Ha", "Damsels in Distress" and "20th Century Women" which were directed by Baumbach, Whit Stillman and Mike Mills respectively.

"Lady Bird" is also her solo writing debut. Gerwig has co-written several projects over the years with Joe Swanberg and Noah Baumbach but they were all projects that she starred in too, reportedly getting the majority of her writing credit for workshopping and ad-libbing throughout the project, in "Lady Bird", she doesn’t have that option – even though the project is heavily autobiographical.

Several critics picked up on this, including J. R. Jones of the Chicago Reader who believed the “[Greta] Gerwig finds a warmer part of herself when, unencumbered by any lab partner, she returns to her hometown” and this sets the tone for much of 'Lady Bird’s' critical reception which focused on the lived in nature of the piece.

Writing for The New York Times, A.O. Scott says that while “in tone and structure, after all, this is teenage comedy. It finds humor in the entirely renewable cycle of senior year: homecoming and prom; math tests and school plays; the agonizing stages of the ‘admissions process.’” But, he’s quick to elaborate: “You might think you’ve seen this all before. You probably have, but never quite like this.”

He puts this all down to the script, in which “none of [the characters] are caricatures […] and while everyone is mocked, nobody is treated with cruelty or contempt” and the dialogue is ”full of wordplay and lively argument. Every line sounds like something a person might actually say, which means that the movie is also exceptionally well acted.” David Sims of The Atlantic described a similar sensation, saying “'Lady Bird' isn’t a movie about any searing issue; it’s just a wonderful, rare character study of a young woman figuring out her identity,” giving it a lived-in, authentic feeling.

Saoirse Ronan is nominated for Best Actress for her role in "Lady Bird". In the Village Voice, Lara Zarum says “Ronan’s performance, which ranges from poignant to sidesplitting, is weighted with a real regard for the anguish of teenage life — she’s funny precisely because, like Lady Bird herself, she takes being Lady Bird so seriously” and in The Guardian, Benjamin Lee wrote in his first look review that “Ronan is sensational, delivering arguably her greatest performance since she broke out with 'Atonement'.”

The authenticity extends elsewhere and the film has been praised for the little period details that Gerwig catches, but doesn’t focus on, with her direction. Set in the 2002 school year – the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the dot-com bubble bursting – Lady Bird’s parents are her “passive, secretly depressed dad [who] has been laid off and can’t find new work, at one point interviewing for the same position as his own son. [And] her mother, a health care worker, has been forced to take on extra shifts, leaving her in a quasi-permanent bad mood,” which, as suggested by Dana Stevens of Slate, reflect the mood of the time without becoming heavy-handed.

According to Oddschecker, "Lady Bird" is the third-placed favorite for Best Picture – not as solid as "Three Billboards" or "The Shape of Water", but far more likely than the rest of the pack – with odds of 11/1. Gerwig also seems unlikely to follow Bigelow in becoming the second ever female Best Director as she is, again, in third position, this time behind Guillermo del Toro and Christopher Nolan, at 9/1. Where the film is likely to win is Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay, as in both, Saoirse Ronan and Greta Gerwig are close seconds behind Frances McDormand and Jordan Peele respectively.