20th Century Women (2016)

The year is 1979 and Dorothea Fields finds herself in her 50s raising a teenage boy, Jaime, while running a house in Santa Barbara that is always going through renovations. Jaime’s father is not in the picture but who needs a father when your mother rents rooms to a handful of particular individuals ranging from different generations. Director Mike Mills casts three powerful actresses, Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning, to fill the roles of the different women in Jaime’s life and they help create three compelling female characters that pulls you in. The problem? These three exceptional characters are subsided for a coming-of-age narrative that fails to compare to the women that help raised it. > Set in Santa Barbara, the film follows Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening), a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie (newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann, in a breakout performance) at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women in Jamie's upbringing - via Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home, and Julie (Elle Fanning), a savvy and provocative teenage neighbor. Being a single parent is tough, it is even tougher when your son is a teenager dealing with romances, the freeing energy of punk music and playing games which entails panting real hard while someone pulls on their diaphragm. After a trip to the hospital, Annette Bening’s Dorothea realizes she might not be able to raise her son by herself and requests the aide of the different women in Jaime’s life. Dorothea does not need help with the physical needs of raising a child in providing shelter and nutrition but the psychological needs of raising in a child in providing the knowledge about life, women and what it means to be a man. Each female was born in a different generation and dealing with their own issues that life has handed them and this leads to Jaime becoming that much more confused about life. Annette Bening is absolutely fantastic as Dorothea and you grow a connection with her because Dorothea isn’t developed as a motherly character but as a human. It isn’t all Dorothea’s fault as she was raised during the Depression as Jaime loves to points out. She put a barrier around her and her son when his father left and this is shown through her moments of conservatisms despite being a free spirit of sorts. She tasks these females with a job that she should be doing but that doesn’t mean she is taking a step from the spotlight. She joins them to a trip to a punk rock club so she could not only understand her son but these females as well. The first to tackle the challenge of raising Jaime is Greta Gerwig’s Abbie who is influenced by feminism, punk music and photography. Abbie uses the first two influences to help guide Jaime into an understanding of what it means to be a man. As titles such as Our Bodies, Our Selves and Sisterhood is Powerful find a way onto Jaime’s lap and words such as clitoris stimulation and menstruating find a way into Jaime’s ears, Abbie’s attempts to help Jaime define what a man is by allowing herself define herself through a the perceptive of past males in her life. This is a trend that could be found in all three women as Ellie Fanning’s Julie uses her promiscuity to rebel against her therapist mother and the world. Ellie, who is closest to Jaime’s age, is the last one to tackle the task given to her and if she wasn’t already sneaking into Jaime’s bed every night, she probably would have avoided the task altogether. Jaime yearns for Ellie and she informs him that he just wants the idea of her. Jaime is confused, after all he is a teenage boy, and all the hormones and feminist literature is not helping. The definition of what a man and woman is changes every generation. My great grandfather would tell me that a man buys a woman flowers, write her love letters and a bunch of other things males in 2016 no longer consider tasks a man does. Three different females are attempting to define these terms through the scope of their generation and how their generation saw it and unfortunately, majority of those definitions are no longer validated for Jaime’s generation. 20th Century Women takes things one step further and gives us backstories and what is to come of everyone living within the house. There is no real problem with this except for the fact that these backstories don't offer any real reflection which adds to the frustration that the film does not have an arc, well not one I could point out. At one point, I thought the film was concluding as we learn what is to come of Dorothea early on. I was later surprised that there was still an hour left within the film. Dabbled with nostalgia, 20th Century Women would have made for a better coming-of-age if the film decided to follow our titular women than just a boy that connected the three together.

**Rather a 20th century tale!** You have seen films like this often. This is where a chick film meets art. Art means not the flick full of inspiration, message, awareness. But the presentation was so pleasant. The screenplay carefully picked the right events, and the dialogues were good. The book fanatics would go and look for the original source it was adapted from. But the truth is it was an originally written screenplay, and that's why it got a nomination at the recent Oscars. Another way to say, it inspired by the director's own childhood life, being raised by his mother and sister. This is the story of a single mother, whose teenage son is struggling to blend with the world. Then they have two roommates, one a woman in her 20s and a middle aged man. Beside a girl of her son's age visits regularly and sometimes secretly. So how all these people influence in the boy's life is the story that revealed. His mother being from different generation and not understanding the present world, which was the year 1979, where the film sets in. From the director of 'Beginners', yet another unique film. Thematically there's nothing special, though it was carved with the excellent bunch of actors made the difference. I'm not sure the title was perfect for what the film narrated. Yes, if it was Annette Bening's Dorothea's story, then it justifies. But the story does not have one perspective of narration. All the main characters like Bening, Elle, Greta, Crudup and Zumann, shared screen equally. So, instead I would have preferred the title, '20th Century Tale'. Greta kind of reminded me Kristen Stewart with the hair like that. Two hours long drama with some funs. Really a good film. The topics it brings in for discussion were interesting, especially which is in the current era. Films like this should be watching. It is about the life, people with different characters and ambitions. _7/10_

Full review: Director Mike Mills has described _20th Century Women_ as a love letter to his childhood set in a sleepy Santa Barbara of 1979. Dorothea (Annette Bening) runs a boarding house and lives with her son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zimmerman), Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a photographer, and William (Billy Crudup), an auto mechanic. Always hanging around the house is Julie (Elle Fanning), a good friend of Jamie. Dorothea is a single mother and enlists the help of Julie and Abbie to teach Jamie how to be a good man.