The changing emotions on leaving home is something many of us can relate to.

In Greta Gerwig's first film, Ladybird, written and directed solely by her, the journey of a young and wild teenage girl is depicted as she tries to find herself throughout her final year of high school.

Ladybird, real name Christine, must navigate the difficulties of trying to work out what she is good at, the friendships she keeps, the boys she dates, all against a backdrop of fighting her her highly-strung mother, described as both warm and scary.

Ladybird wants to flee her Sacramento upbringing on "the wrong side of the tracks" and find culture at an East coast college, despite her family's struggles with money, which she is far too, well, teenage to truly understand.

Meanwhile, she decides to join the theatre gang in order to bring up her extra-curricular, falling in love with a loveable, straight-laced leading man with a secret, played by Lucas Hedges.

But things soon start to change and she becomes preoccupied with being in the "cool" group, meeting the philosophically-obsessed introvert Kyle, played by Timothee Chalamet, and trying desperately to hide her family's lower income through a web of deceit.

But the heart of the film comes in her relationship with her mother, played by Laurie Metcalf. She perfectly brings to life a mother who is unable to be open with her feelings, who is strong in character and full of heart, but feels like she is holding everything together, and struggling to do so. Their constant butting heads will leave many reminded of their relationships with their parents, and Gerwig perfectly juxtaposes moments of anger and frustration with moments of tenderness.

Early in the film, the mother and daughter cry together while listening to an audiobook of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, before immediately running into a furious row which culminates in Ladybird jumping out of a moving car.

The other relationship which is key in the film is Ladybird and her best friend, Julie, played by Beanie Feldstein, as they are close then distant throughout Ladybird's various wanderings. Their friendship is important as, again, you see in Julie a person who is both joyful and full of life but also plagued by difficulties in life.

Again, they go from having rows in front of the school gates to sitting in Julie's apartment eating all the cheese in the kitchen, before jetting off to the prom and being one another's date.

Saiorse Ronan's turn as Ladybird has been Oscar nominated, and too right, for she is completely perfect in this role. She is able to convey such strong emotion with the tiniest flicker of an eyebrow or tilt of the head, and it creates the perfect nuance for a character whose emotions tend to run riot.

This film is one which will undoubtedly be watched over and over again by many, tapping into a generation's teenage struggles in an indelible way.