20th Century Women (2016)

iheardthatmoviewas November 3, 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…

Reno September 8, 2017

★ 7/10

**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 th…

beyondthecineramadome June 20, 2022

★ 10/10

Full review: https://www.tinakakadelis.com/beyond-the-cinerama-dome/2021/12/28/-20th-century-women-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.