An odds-defying athlete gets her due

 Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, died in 2003 at the age of 98. Ederle's obituary in The New York Times included this defining sentence, "her feat, which she did only once and under horrendous conditions, made a memorable contribution in an age when many found it difficult to take female athletes seriously."

  After an initial flood of attention, Ederle failed to "sustain the lofty place in history of another hero of the 1920s, Charles A. Lindbergh," the Times article also noted.

   Put succinctly, Ederle did not become an enduring household name.

   A new movie, Young Woman and the Sea, tries to redress that slight with a biopic that underscores the difficulties Ederle faced because of prejudice against women athletes, in part due to backlash from the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in 1920.

   Director Joachim Ronning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) brings a spirit of female empowerment to a conventionally told story that stars Daisy Ridley, best known for her Star Wars work, as "Trudy" Ederle,

  A childhood bout with measles impaired Ederle's hearing. Her mother (Jeanette Hain) had to overcome resistance to involve her daughter in organized swimming. After a steamboat accident claimed many lives, the elder Ederle insisted that her daughters learn to swim — or so the movie has it. An eager Trudy didn't take much convincing.

    Ederle's father, a German-immigrant butcher played by Kim Bodnia upheld traditional Old-World values, hoping his daughters would agree to arranged marriages.

  Ederle's inauspicious beginnings built toward triumph with an appearance in the 1924 Olympics, where she won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay. She quickly decided to add the English Channel to her expanding resume.

   A by-the-numbers approach to Ederle's story is augmented by performances from Hain as Ederle's stern, determined mother, and Tina Cobham-Hervey, as Ederle's sister and confidant. 

   Additional cast includes Sian Clifford as Lottie Epstein, Ederle's first coach and swimming instructor, Christopher Eccleston as the bigoted coach who sabotaged her first attempt to swim the Channel, and Stephen Graham as the colorful male Channel swimmer who took charge of the boat that guided Ederle in her Channel swim.

    Ridley shows plenty of pluck, but the actors are all constrained by the point-blank quality of the writing, which focuses more on the inspirational qualities of Ederle's story than on any deep probing. 

   Some of the movie's details -- the invention of a two-piece bathing suit, for example -- add interest, as does a warm-up swim she made from New York to New Jersey. Ederle also seems to have been obsessed with the 1921 song, Ain't We Got Fun.

     Cinematographer Oscar Faura reportedly filmed in open Black Sea waters, a decision that enhances the swimming scenes. Anyone who has battled waves and undercurrents knows how arduous ocean swimming can be. 

     Ederle's plunge through a sea of jellyfish and the nighttime disorientation she felt while tackling shallows off the Dover coast create tension, but the movie mostly functions as a belated ticker-tape parade to a self-assured, odds-defying woman.

     Before the closing credits, you'll see poignant black-and-white footage of the real Ederle and the real New York City ticker-tape parade she received --reminders of a now-faded moment of national celebration and exuberance.

     Young Woman and the Sea blends old-fashioned style and inspirational ambition in ways that may connect with audiences or, at minimum, introduce them to a neglected bit of popular history. Maybe that's enough.

A journalist is imprisoned in Iran

Comic Jon Stewart makes a serious directorial debut with Rosewater.

Curiosity about the new movie Rosewater stems in part from its pedigree. Rosewater, which tells the story of a journalist who was imprisoned and tortured in Iran, marks the directorial debut of comic Jon Stewart.

No stranger to political commentary, Stewart drops his satirical edge, building his movie from quiet outrage about what happens when free expression is trampled and ideology replaces sanity.

Rosewater attacks this larger theme by focusing on the story of Maziar Bahari, an Iranian/Canadian journalist whose book, Then They Came for Me, became the bestseller that provided a basis for Stewart's movie.

Bahari's journey began with an assignment for Newsweek: When we meet him, he's covering the election between hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi, the candidate who promised sweeping reforms.

In need of transportation, Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) quickly establishes a relationship with a cab driver (Dimitri Leonidas) who subsequently introduces him to a group of reform-minded young people who believe Iran is on the brink of revolutionary change. Their enthusiasm is infectious; they can't wait for a new day.

It never dawned. Ahmadinejad won. The country's opposition claimed election fraud and protests broke out.

The fact that Bahari filmed a protest in which soldiers fired on protesters helped seal his fate. He was arrested and accused of being a spy. In 2009, Bahari spent 118 days in prison.

Once in Evin Prison, Bahari underwent interrogation, beatings and psychological torture, mostly (according to the movie) at the hands of one man (Kim Bodnia), an official who's eager to please his superiors by eliciting a confession from Bahari.

Bernal presents Bahari as a young journalist who can't quite believe that he's been caught in a position in which he must accept a reality that, to him, seems entirely absurd. At various points during his ordeal, he weakens.

Stewart, who filmed Rosewater in Jordan, uses real news footage to heighten the film's sense of immediacy and to give it breadth, but for the most part, Rosewater is a closed-in drama.

We follow Bahari as he moves from his spartan cell to the interrogation room, where he's often blindfolded.

Perhaps to open things up a bit, Stewart also includes scenes in which Bahari imagines that he's talking to his late father (Haluk Bilginer), a man who served time in the same prison during the Shah's repressive regime. These fantasy conversations help Bahari build strength for his ordeal.

Shohreh Aghdashloo plays Bahari's mother, and Claire Foy portrays his London-based, pregnant wife, but the central drama hinges on the relationship between Bahari and a tormenter who isn't always sure of himself and who, on at least one occasion, finds himself at odds with his boss.

Bahari calls his interrogator Rosewater because the man has a habit of sprinkling himself with cologne.

The film finds a brief touch of wit when Bahari tells his captor about the degenerate ways of the West, putting the man in the delicate position of wanting to hear more about the sexual decadence he's pledged to combat.

As Bahari fictionalizes about various forms of massage, he's provided with a rare -- if fleeting -- opportunity to exercise a measure of control over his tormenter.

Stewart's interest in the story stems from the fact that an appearance Bahari made on The Daily Show was part of the evidence used against him. Bahari was interviewed in Tehran by comic Jason Jones for a satirical Daily Show segment in which Jones posed as a spy.

International attention helped free Bahari, whose story may constitute only a footnote in the overall sweep of global oppression, but Stewart tells Bahari's story with urgency and authenticity.

In the process, he reminds us of what can happen when literalists take command of a culture; i.e., nothing good.