User reviews

Just like the central character in this film, I was born in 1964. Just like him, I was 15 in 1979. My mother was only two years older than his mother. So, you'd think I could relate to this film. But I couldn't, really.

Maybe that is because I didn't grow up in a bohemian single parent household in Santa Barbara. Life for 15 year old Jamie was different than it was from me. I had two parents, but I didn't have a skateboard.

Yes, I can remember Jimmy Carter being president. But I didn't see his impressive and remarkably modern 'Crisis of Confidence'-speech, which is an important feature in one of the scenes of this film. There's only one thing which caused somewhat nostalgic emotions: making mix tapes. Yes, I did that too.

'20th Century Women', which is essentially about a mother raising a son, has nice scenes. I really liked the explanation about punk rock music to the 55 year old mother: she complains about the lack of beauty, but exactly that is the strength of it. There are many such scenes, with small but meaningful events, telling a lot about how life was in the seventies.

But the story itself didn't captivate me. Jamie's mother thinks she can't raise Jamie on her own, so she involves his best friend (a girl) and a photographer who rents a room in the house (also a girl). They teach him lots of things about sex, music, seducing women, and life in general. All characters are in a way in search of there own destiny. So, a lot of soul searching is going on. Anyway, the film contains one of the best one-liners I've heard in years: 'Wondering if you're happy is a great shortcut to just being depressed'.

The scene feels remarkably familiar – Dorothea (Bening), the matron and saint of a Santa Barbara household circa 1979 leans in on her son Jamie (Zumann) listening to "Fairytale in the Supermarket" by The Raincoats. "They know they sound terrible right?" she says. Abbie (Gerwig), Dorothea's avant-garde lodger interjects; "yeah, but it's like they don't care. They got all this feeling but don't have the tools they need to express it…it all comes out as passion." Dorothea fixates on Abbie's intonation, like listening to language she's only now grasping. She gets it...but then she doesn't.

Much like Abbie's defense of The Raincoats, Dorothea believes she has all the passion to be a proper mother, but she lacks the right tools to support a son who is growing older with each passing moment. She decides to enlist the help of two young women; Julie, Jamie's best friend and crush and Abbie a free spirit who was recently treated for cervical cancer. The only other man in the picture is William (Crudup) a well-meaning former hippie with a gift for mechanics and a passion for pottery. Between them all, the stalwart Dorothea hopes to quietly guide her son through his formative years which pit her depression era approach, to Jamie's recession era resentments. "Don't you need a man to raise another man?" asks Julie. "No I don't think you do." 20th Century Women starts with competing voice-overs and uses a collage approach to convey the surfaces of each character's inner life. The collages are stuffed to the brim with stills of 1930's gloom and 1960's turbulence all set to audio of proto-punk, Jimmy Carter's Malaise Speech and "As Life Goes By" from Casablanca (1942). It's an awkward mix; one that creates an echo chamber of sorts.

That subtle discordance of people talking at and not to each other, runs through the first half of the film. Jamie's coming-of-age story, a volatile mix of stubborn familial resentment and unrequited love clobbers together with Dorothea's own midlife crisis. "I had Jamie when I was 40." Dorothea says; a fact that can help explain Dorothea's free-range parenting approach, but also helps explain why Jamie's sharp insights cut so deep. For a while there it always seems like its Jamie versus Dorothea, pulled apart by an ever widening generational gap.

Then, like responding to the blessing of a wartime parlay, the factions in this film begin to center and calm. It is during this truce that the film begins to really take off, presenting its characters with vibrancy and humanity while flying through a more nuanced story arc. Almost independently both Jamie and Dorothea learn their goals are one in the same and the differences they have are little compared to their mutual respect for time which presents itself in rainbow tinged tracking shots and subtle fast-forwards.

And at the center of 20th Century Women lies the affable Annette Bening who suitably captures the zeitgeist of a generation no longer with us. While most might pigeonhole Dorothea as a madcap eccentric or worse a passive pushover, Bening wisely lets the character's inner strength shine through. Dorothea is unabashedly a one of a kind lady. She invites strangers to dinner, invites herself to punk clubs, leaves early, and then comes back days later alone. She verves uncomfortably with post-sexual revolution mores yet she quietly takes frank conversations about menstruation in stride. She does all this because she knows that with every encounter, every meeting, every stranger there's a chance for exchange.

Of course 20th Century Women is not without its problems. While Bening, Gerwig and Fanning all do wonders in their roles, Zumann fails to endear the young Jamie to the audience in any meaningful way. Part of it is due to the part as it is written. The film is loosely based on the life of director Mike Mills thus Jamie at times feels more like an avatar than a real teenager. Additionally it's ironic that despite constant paraphrasing of feminist literature, 20th Century Women would struggle to pass the Bechdel Test. Our three women characters orbit Jamie's life and analyze his actions and motives like he's the center of their universe.

Yet, while the film uses the wider Women's Liberation movement as window dressing, allowing the external conflicts of the film to melt away to reveal honest internal pain was a stroke of genius. Genius enough to maybe be interpreted as a meta-text on standard storytelling practices being a form of patriarchal oppression. That however is a discussion for another day. 20th Century Women is an artfully rendered film with plenty to say about the passage of time, the commonality between the generation gaps and the unifying love of mother and son.

I understand the rage of many other US reviewers because this movie is so far from usual Hollywood clichés that it does not even look like an US movie! It seems an European movie. Bergman, Fellini and stuff... It is NOT boring. It has its pace and it is exacly what it has to be. I identified myself at different levels. I was born in 1958, just like the main actress (great performance). And like Dorothea I had a daugther when I was in my 40s (she now is 15, like Jamie, Dorothea's son) and I don't know how to talk to her, I don't like much of the music she likes and so on. I was a teenager in the 70s, so I identified with Jamie, great character: I wish I had one thousandth of his self-consciousness when I was his age!

This movie was oxygen for suffocating US major's movies, after sequels and remakes and CGI shows finally something to think about.

"20th Century Women" (2016 release; 118 min.) brings the story of Dorothea, a divorced woman in her mid-50s, and her 15 yr. old son Jamie. As the movie opens, we are reminded it is "Santa Barbara, 1979", and Dorothea's car is engulfed in flames while she and Jamie were grocery shopping. When they finally get home, we also get to know Abbie, a 24 yr. old orange-haired photographer, and William, a Mr. fix-it-all, who both are renting rooms at Dorothea's house. Then there is Julie, the 17 yr. old who hangs out at the house for no apparent reason. When Dorothea feels she cannot handle the unruly(?) Jamie by herself, she enlists the help of Abbie and Julie. At this point we're 15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the long-awaited new movie from writer-director Mike Mills, who last surprised us with the outstanding "Beginners" (now already 6+ years ago). Here he brings a character study of a group of 5 people in the late 70s. This movie immediately connected with me, as I saw pieces of myself in "young" people: Abbie (Born 1955), Julie (born 1962) and Jamie (born 1964). I was born in 1960. The movie features an all-star ensemble cast, with an almost unrecognizable Great Gerwig as Abbie (and on the heels of another outstanding role in the recent "Jackie"), Elle Fanning in perhaps her best role to date as Julie, Billy Crudup as William, and newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann as Jamie. Surely we have not seen the last of him. But the biggest applause must go to Annette Bening, who brings perhaps the finest performance of her career as the well-intended but at times confused, sad and/or lonely Dorothea. Mills brings us these characters in rich detail and nuance, much to the viewing public's delight. Ever wonder what a "cool cigarette walk" is like? You'll find out in the movie. Music plays a ventral role in the movie. There is a fine original score (mostly electronic) by Roger Neill, but even better are the song placements (Talking Head, Black Flag, David Bowie, the Clash, and many others).

"20th Century Women" premiered to great acclaim at the New York Film Festival last Fall. The movie opened wide this weekend and I couldn't wait to see it. The Friday evening screening where I saw this at was attended nicely although by no means close to a sell-out. Doesn't matter. This is one of the finer movies of the year, for me anyway. If you like a richly-developed character study with an all-star ensemble cast, you cannot go wrong with this, be it in the theater, on VOD or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray. "20th Century Women" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

"Guys aren't supposed to look like they're thinking about what they look like." Julie (Elle Fanning)

No they're not, but in Mike Mills' 20th Century Women, some rules don't apply, and the young man, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), is well on his way to come of age in a most unusual household. It's 1979, before the Internet and Reagan and after the Punk rage. In other words, it's a time of cultural and personal transition.

No one is more responsible for this cultural migration in the Fields family than Dorothea (Annette Bening), a middle-aged matriarch with wit and lungs that will, in 20 years, surrender to the assault of her incessant smoking (her voice-over narration tells us so). Dorothea has the calm, contemplative, accepting nature to guide her two children, Jamie and Abbie (Greta Gerwig), into a responsible adulthood prefaced by sexual exploration and establishment defiance.

Although I rarely comment on acting, I must single out Bening for a performance of rich nuance, eschewing the theatrics of Oscar baiting to give us a character with immense affection and uncertainty, just like many of us, I suspect. Her low-key but powerful interpretation should get an Oscar nod.

While the examination of teen sexuality in flux is well described, so too is Dorothea's odyssey from a broken marriage to a Zen-like acceptance. As in the iconic Seinfeld world, nothing seems to be happening. However beneath that middle-class ambiance lie hearts struggling with their own shifting shapes under the watchful eye of family.

20th Century Women is all about the overwhelming part family plays in human development, not in grandly dramatic exercises but in the small notes like sitting in bed chatting or going with mother to a nightclub. As the credit sequence will tell you, life turns out fairly well despite the uncertainties of daily vicissitudes documented so distinctly here.

Greetings again from the darkness. Writer/director Mike Mills has found a niche, and a form of therapy, by exploring and exposing his life in a most public manner … on the silver screen. Beginners (2010) brought us the story of his father's (an Oscar winner for Christopher Plummer) late life pronouncement of homosexuality. This time, Mr. Mills turns his lens and his pen towards his mother, and he seems to understand her much better in retrospect than in the summer of 1979 when the film is set.

This can be viewed as the story of three women, masked as a coming-of-age story for a teenage boy. Annette Bening stars as Dorothea, a chain-smoking single mother in her mid-50's who seems to have surrendered to her own sadness and loneliness, while simultaneously trying to make sense of a changing world. One of her tenants is Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a photographer and NYC punk scene drop-out, who is now battling cervical cancer. The third female is the seemingly always present Julie (Elle Fanning), a sexually promiscuous and borderline depressive 18 year old who values the platonic friendship she has with Dorothea's 15 year old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zuman).

Factor in another tenant in the form of laid-back handyman and former hippie William (Billy Crudup), and we have a makeshift family in a communal setting that seems almost normal for 1979 Santa Barbara. Dorothea enlists the other two women to show Jamie their lives – the intent being to influence his growth in ways an older mother can't. Of course, Jamie is at the age where exploring life isn't necessarily best served by tagging along on a trip to the gynecologist with Abbie or having no-touch sleepovers with Julie.

Ms. Bening finds her groove as the story progresses and we feel her struggling to connect to each of the characters. When William plays a Black Flag song, her reaction is priceless: "They know they're not good, right?" She doesn't mean it as a put down, but rather her attempt to understand why her son is drawn to this. An even more emotionally naked moment occurs when Jamie is reading a passage from "The Feminine Mystique" to his mother. It's a passage that captures what he thinks of her, as well as what she thinks of herself … a mostly invisible woman finding it difficult to be a parent while also maintaining a self.

Mills is not one to be nostalgic or glorify the past. His brilliant writing includes lines like "Wondering if you are happy is a great short cut to being depressed." The movie can be slow moving at times, but it's the best I've seen in awhile at expressing what makes us tick. The film is what Running with Scissors should have been. Real people are sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, and sometimes annoying. Each of the characters here are all of the above (just like you and me).

20th Century Women isn't about giving us some epic look at a group of friends or a family, but it is about the passage of time with people who are warm and caring and in a genuine way. Mike Mills isn't a saccharine filmmaker, but he also doesn't shy away from sentiment - I always have to point out this is separate from sentimentality - and the feeling that I came away with from the comedy 20th Century Women is this warmth from all of the characters, and this feeling that I know these people, whether I did or didn't (and I actually did in the sense that, at times, the mother and son were me and my mom for a short period of my teenage years, so there's an authenticity just there to me).

There's so much empathy for everyone here that it adds to the authenticity of the emotions, even for Greta Gerwig's Abbie who is, in essence, another 'Greta Gerwig' character like I've seen, or think I've seen, in other movies (her quirky wisdom seems akin to last year's Mistress America at least). While she is my least favorite person in this movie, she's given a history and many moments, surrounding one of those terrible things that happens to people and there's not much to be done about it, or could've, it's out of the hands of anything *to* be done. There's so much work done on the characters here by Mills, getting us to like them despite all of their flaws or those moments where they don't act with logic or sense, that it doesn't matter that there isn't too much of a story. This is the story of these characters in a short span of time while also, as if looking on from some other, ethereal plane, about what this time meant in the context of what came before 1979, and what was to come.

Among the actors here, Lucas Jade Zumann is the breakout star as the 15 year old Jamie, but I was so taken with Benning and Fanning as the 50-ish, "she was in the depression" as she's described mother and the 2 years older than Jamie but that matters so much pleutonic friend respectively. I wonder if the film would've worked with any other actors in the roles, but really I can't imagine anyone else. Every time Bening's on screen she gives Dorothea this feeling of 'well... I guess this is happening now, what do I do about it, I'm not sure', and while she can get angry or concerned she's never one to go too over the top - this is the anti-Fences in that regard of being about a kid scarred by a parent - she does care about what happens to her son, with the "inciting incident" in screen writing terms being him almost dying from doing one of those dumb-s*** things teenagers do on a dare. It's a unique and subtle performance, filled with a sense of... questioning, uncertainty, which is harder to pull off than it looks.

Fanning, meanwhile, is also having to underplay, which is good to see. This is an impressive year for her between this, Live by Night (which she was the best part of) and the Neon Demon, and she's different in all of them. I want to say I like the work she does here the most even as (or because) it's the least likable one among the bunch (and keep in mind she's a born-again Christian in the South in LbN). Mills's writing provides Fanning a great deal to make Julie come alive, but I found her not saying things, the way she shows Jamie how to hold a cigarette, when she is saying little, and then when she is backed into doing something that she should want to do but doesn't go for - going past being 'just friends' with Jamie in the last third - how she responds is devastating. It's like, 'no, don't act this way', as opposed to simply looking at her as a "B"-word, which is how a hackier writer could've gone with it.

Oh, and I must reiterate this is a comedy, and it's funny as hell. There's certainly some dramatic stretches, but Mills mines a lot of humor out of generational splits - Bening's face as she hears early Black Flag, and then trying to "move" to it with Billy Crudup, is one of the funniest things this year - and it's a tricky balance that Mills finds between making the feminism (yes, actual literature and quotes spoken in voice-over from essays) serious AND humorous. We don't doubt that the feminism of the characters is pure, but there's also that question that's posed: how much is really appropriate, or can be legitimately understood, by 15 year old who barely knows who he is in this world?

And on top of this Mills is having fun and some daring as a filmmaker, using psychedelic colors to show cars driving at times, and going not for the slow-motion but fast-motion speed, but not for comedy - the aesthetic point matches up with what the movie's about: life moves too fast, and we have to try and keep up with it best as we can and grow with things and become better people as everything moves too quickly. If it's ultimately too episodic to be anything really great or up to be there with the very best this year, I'd still tell anyone who likes smart character independent(ish) movies centered on teenagers and adults to see it immediately; it has a good place alongside The Squid and the Whale and, to a less taboo extent, Diary of a Teenage Girl.

Elle Fanning uggh yes. Okay, now that that's out of the way lets get to this film. This seemed like an unconventional coming of age film and that is basically what this was. Its not a mindblowingly amazing film and has some flaws. However, what I thought was a flaw may have worked for another viewer. What I can say though, is that the film left a better impression on me than I thought it would.

The performances of this film are great, particularly that of Greta Gerwig and Annette Bening. Gerwig is such a real character who is pained but absolutely does what she wants to do in life. She has a hard time finding love but her very open nature makes her identifiable. Bening is tremendous in the best role I've seen from her. She's an easygoing mother who is worried about her son and how he deals with life. Remarkably cool but nuanced. Also, Elle Fanning good lord I love her. Okay, I had to get that out of my system again. All of the characters have substantial depth and you do not leave the film feeling like a character's story was underdeveloped. The main core of characters are all in close proximity with each other and through their interactions you get to see their turmoils, struggles, and comfortable nature with each other.

The stories of the characters of the film are at times told by themselves and they seem to be telling the story from a future time, where they have experienced the entirety of their lives. I liked this technique of expansive storytelling. However, there are other things in the film that don't work as well. The slideshow of images of the culture of the 70's seemed gimmicky and didn't exactly add to the film's narrative. It seemed like an attempt to be able to grab viewers but wasn't exactly necessary. There are also times where the scenes have a "psychedelic effect" where the car races off in the highway in a dreamy haze, full with the colors of the rainbow emanating from the car. Again, I thought this was quite gimmicky and trying to harden the fact that this film was supposed to be set in the 70s.

I think one of the things that worked with the film was its humor. There is a lot of it, and while its not always subtle and funny a good amount of it works to make you chuckle or really laugh. Its not something I was expecting but is definitely something that made the film more memorable. There are some scenes that really, really work and help you really want to live in the frame of the characters. The film really focuses on women at the time and a teenage boy trying to navigate in a sea of women in his life. While its not always accurate about men, I think its doing a pleasant job of trying to connect the two while showing some of the plights experienced when men and women try to understand each other. What you get here is a well acted, humorous films that works to entertain.

7/10

This is a very strong film, unless you only like fast-paced action films; I'm going to go out on a limb and say you'll probably like this movie.

As is the norm with A24... it's a good film.

I don't really have much to complain about. I belied in the world of the film, I believed the characters were real, etc-- the world and logic of the film was well established. There were a few tropes of the genre, but some strong writing and direction makes one look past this without really thinking about it. I actually cared about the story and wanted to see how things played out.

The story is a bit disjointed, but I think that works to the film's benefit due to the type of storytelling it's going for, which overall is very effective.

I'd recommend this film to pretty much everyone that likes good movies.

8 out of 10

I wanted to like this movie but it was just too slow most of the time. I didn't feel invested in the characters like I think I should have and the plot just fell short for me.

Big disappointment. There is zero dramatic tension in this leisurely-paced coming of age, homage-to-Mom film. A period piece set up the coast from LA near Santa Barbara in the late 1970's, it is the tale of a 15-year old boy and his single Mom who is worried he needs help becoming a man. So she fills the household with helpers. The characters talk and talk and talk and Bening smokes and smokes and smokes and by the end of the film you wonder why anyone backed this rather self-obsessed little indulgence. Bening is the center of attention, and she tries hard, but she wears as much as she delights as Mom. The other characters seem like stage props with lines. I found it hard to get with most of them. Several people walked out of the screening I attended. I was tempted.

The status of "too personal" could be its basic virtue. and its sin. because it represents a chronicle. about "80 decade, about family life in large sense, about sexual education and motherhood. and, sure, about freedom. in same measure, it is a film with precise target. remembering independent films, near to every day details too much, it is the film who could be an experience, usuful in profound sense, or just waste of time. but, out of that too easy definitions, it is an admirable work. for script, performances - the kind of film in which each actor seems be the only wise choice for his character - but, first, for Annette Bening who does a magnificent job as middle age mother, in war against her past, insecure about future, without courage to become herself, appentice of her son, discovering the essence of life next her friends. a great film. really !

Mike Mills hits a home-run with '20th Century Women'. Mills, with the help of an Astonishing Annette Bening, creates a film (based in-part on Mills' childhood) so emotionally powerful, its impossible not be moved by it.

'20th Century Women' Synopsis: Dorothea (Annette Benning) seeks the help of Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and Julie (Elle Fanning) to raise her son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann).

'20th Century Women' is about relationships, primarily of a mother and son. Mills delivers a personal story with genuine feeling. I loved the other dynamics as well. The characters of Abbie & Julie are strong as well. You watch 3 women in different age groups, help a boy know a little more about life. They speak differently, their relations to the boy are vastly diverse, but they're women, who define feminism & the practicalities of life. Mills keeps the narrative heartfelt & by the time this story ends, you're with the characters & you feel for them. Mills' Screenplay, which has earned him a Very-Worthy Oscar- Nomnation, is superior. The Writing is super-strong at all times. I don't recall a single moment when the film lost me, I was with the film throughout. Mills' Direction is simple, but well-done. Cinematography & Editing are super. Roger Neill's Score is perfect.

'20th Century Women' is embellished with maddening performances. Annette Benning steals the show & how! Her portrayal of a mother trying to her raise her son without a father, is beyond marvelous. Its hard to keep your eyes off the screen when Benning is up. Benning has delivered several memorable performances in her fabulous career, but in '20th Century Women', she surpasses herself. And to the Academy, what in the world made you not nominate her? If this isn't acting of the highest order, then what is?

Following Benning, are Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Lucas Jade Zumann and Billy Crudup. Fanning is a treasure. She delivers a restrained, believable performance from start to end. Grewig, a criminally underrated performer, is only getting better with every film. She's fabulous here & the attitude she carries to portray a women fighting a serious illness, is nerve-wracking. Zumann is natural to the core & his scenes with Benning, are the emotional core of the film. Crudup, sandwiched between 3 beautiful women & a rebelling teenager, is a delight. He gets a smaller part compared to the others, but he leaves a solid impression.

On the whole, '20th Century Women' is A Wonder Of A Film. Two Big Thumbs Up!

This was simple, yet impressive. I love stories about people's lives, and this one was beautiful. A little sad, but hopeful.

Those of you who grew up in the pre-Reagan seventies and expect a cozy and nostalgic trip back in time should be forewarned this is not that movie. This is a movie about women living in the "me decade" the way 'Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory' (1971) was about candy making. The fringe characters seemingly ignore the actual predominant cultural influences of the day (hair care, bad fashion and TV watching) that would have been inescapable except to prison inmates and grad students of the day. (It'd be like watching a movie about our present decade ("the teenies"?) but no one having a cell phone.) Similarly, the cultural zeitgeist is inaccurate. For example, the few men in this movie are inconsequential losers marginalized into roles as handymen or therapuetic sexual facilitators. HAH! Everyone knows that men's obseleteness is another decade away when Billy Crystal makes 'When Harry Met Sally' (1989). (But seriously, if any time travellers are reading this, forget Hitler - take out baby Crystal!) Dorothea (Bening) plays a too hip for any room older Mom informed more by pre war America then the affluence and bigness of post war America. She knows what is coming (the 80's?) and worries for her only son. She enlists a rag tag group of strays whose only apparent qualifications are availability and angst (again twenty years to early) to guide the boy into manhood. The predicament for Dorothea is, except for her son, she seems to like not giving a hoot about anything else. She resigns her self to her smoking habit and the fate therein and barters not with money but invites to dinner parties heightened only by the guests own social ineptness. The son (Jamie) lacks the charm or charisma to believe that anyone except Mom would take an interest in him. In fact, 'Jamie' probably grows up to be Billy Crystal's 'Harry'. Greta Gerwig is wonderful at nailing down the wistfully eccentric 'Abbie'. I'd watch her "reading the phone book". You know, because typically one associates reading a phone book as tedious and boring but she is so wonderful that it would still be worth it. Oh, did that explanation seem patronizing and condescending?! Well, that's how I felt watching this movie.

I don't know how people can't like this , I say forget the reviews and just watch it. You can thank me later .

What I loved about 20th century women was how evocatively it built the atmosphere of the time it was representing. The film was a sensory mood board of features from the years it captured and I really felt I was experiencing a passionately curated dip into the past. The films keeps up the momentum of engaging narrative, music and visuals and even the small intimate moments captivate the attention. I always love an unconventional pairing within a story and there was a sensitive exploration of relationships within this film which where fascinating because of the clever combination of differences. I Loved the matriarchal mother Dorothea she was a brilliantly tough sharp minded woman but her character highlighted the repressively resolute attitudes from the older generation within the set time of the film. In one scene, even an older woman as forward thinking as Dorothea didn't want to address the stigma of menstruation or the freedom women should have to talk about sex when two young female characters try to open up, and it really reflected the teething period of quickly changing ideologies. The film was a refreshing break from all the motivational career pursuit films, as the lives of the characters seem happily enriched through the exploring of literature and art in their own homes. The end sequence was unexpectedly emotional and gave a lot of wisdom to mull over!

American filmmaker Mike Mills' third feature film, 20th CENTURY WOMEN is a semi- autobiographical treatment thrives for encapsulating the zeitgeist of its time through the eyes of his alter ego Jamie (Zumann), a 15-year-older living in Santa Barbara in 1979, and those who are involved in his life at that stage, including his single mother Dorothea (Bening), Julie (Fanning), the girl-next-door he cottons to, and two tenants sharing the same roof with the mother-son pair: a free-wheeling cinematographer Abbie (Gerwig) and William (Crudup), an ex-hippie-turned- mechanic, that's the central quintet.

Each character is given a magnanimous character arc to lay bare their problems and quirks, Dorothea is concerned with the communication blockage caused when Jamie reaching adolescence and asks both Julie and Abbie for help, to infuse their feminine wisdom to ease the process, but the mirror has two faces, in Jamie's book, it is her who has drifted away from him, emotionally speaking, her ingrained sadness and loneliness has hog-tied her from even attempting to seek a new lease on her life. Bening puts a defiant face to sort out a mother's indefatigable stamina conjoined with hapless frustration, whenever the camera leveling at her, she radiates with élan and candid, no matter how platitudinous her lines are, her masterclass delivery is the ballast of this snappy but also self-indulging reflection of an ineffectual Bidungsroman, interlaced with lengthy voice-over and token signs-of-the-times.

As a patent feminist manifesto indicated by its name, Mills makes heavy plays of its female characters, Abbie, stricken by cervical cancer and runs the risk of forfeiting motherhood, is the most sympathetic character and a ginger Gerwig is perfectly cast, she is tasked with the "menstruation" oration, because of her time-tested screen persona: she can be radical, quirky, but simultaneously vulnerable and self-effacing, a quality so unique that often errs on the side of being typecast. Elle Fanning's Julie, on the other hand, tiptoes between adolescence and adulthood, dangles Jamie with her dalliance with others yet maintains a chaste relationship with him (he has been entrapped in the friends zone for too long), but that's what is part and parcel to be an impressionable young girl, especially a pretty one and those equally impressionable young boys need to respect that!

From that viewpoint, we might find the film tends to be a tad didactic and patronizing since the story chiefly sets the main key on the more conventional "the kid is alright" arc of a cisgender boy, who has grown up in a household peopled with women who are much more interesting than him, even the undervalued William, who is not exactly a conventional father figure, but Crudup is in one of his most relaxed and unassuming forms, somewhat inward-looking but alternately exuberantly charming.

While one might feel underwhelmed by its self-referential narrative and jarring by its often clunky dialogue, at the very least, the film has a congenial flair of communion among its main characters, and from the opening aerial shot introducing its locale to its eye-soothing vintage production, to the time-lapsed novelty of automobiles in motion, 20TH CENTURY WOMEN proves that it has enough ammo in the cartridge, but the shooter himself is not a dead-eye.

Is this the film that "Licorice Pizza" wanted to be? Or just the film that I wanted Licorice Pizza to be??

Anyways this truly is a coming of age story, true to its late 70's setting. The mix of music/art and even a smidgeon of Jimmy Carter, all helped ground the film historically. But truly it is steeped in the director Mike Mills' love for his mother (and sisters). I should say love along with some sense of mystery.

There is sort of a post-commune quasi-commune vibe to the house, and it accentuates a 70's era California breeziness, even if Annette Bening as the Mother character is doing her best to kind of fake a relaxed nature. Tough and vulnerable! All of the actors embraced their roles, flaws and all. Elle Fanning's "Julie" character was interesting even though we get a reduced slice of her upbringing as the daughter-of-a-psychoanalyst.

Greta Gerwig was very very alive in her role. Really you could just watch it for her, but its the various family fragments that find each other that make this a unified pizza with a lot of toppings.

So glad they got the musical rights they did. Something about just a whiff of the Devo opening riff to "Gut Feeling" (is this the 3rd time it's been used in films from that era, or more?). Well it really gets my goat. As did the Buzzcocks for the closing credits.

There was an element to the liberation music provided back then, I'm not sure it is the same today. The amazing access of the internet is great sonically, but the insane amount of available diversity might dilute its impact.

I found myself thinking about this film a lot in various ways like that. Not just reflecting back, but it has a different effect today. In general I salute single parents the way Mills salutes the memory of his Mom.

Watched this after "C'mon C'mon" and it appears "Beginners" is rooted in the Mills cleaved family tree as well. So may have to check that out next.

Annette Bening was starring in the movie ; in the movie i found her character so even-tempered, smooth, wise and respectable that in some points i was thinking that is the ideal personality i'm willing to have in my 55.

It took the incredible skill and talent of an amazing cast (especially Annette Bening) to keep this otherwise disastrously weak script from entirely falling apart. The film attempts to do a character study, but fails to commit to any one character enough to be well understood or relatable. Invoking next to no emotion from the viewer, I have left the film feeling neither sad or elated, as if I have spent the last 2 hours doing nothing. Perhaps I am being unfair...as an otherwise non- critical viewer, I have strong emotions about leaving a film without something. Was that the mission?!

5/10 stars, all 5 for a cast that worked with nothing and still managed to come up with something.