Malaise

20TH CENTURY WOMEN (A-minus) - Sensitive writer-director Mike Mills returns to familiar ground with this detailed autobiographical period piece about a teenage boy growing up with strong female influences.

This is a callback of sorts to Mills' debut film, "Thumbsucker," about a teenage boy evolving under the influence of three male father figures. (It has a lot in common with 2015's "Diary of a Teenage Girl," too.) And whereas his last film, "Beginners," was a tribute to Mills' father (who came out as gay late in life), this one nods to his mother, here in the form of feisty Dorothea (Annette Bening), who had Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) when she was already 40 and who appears to be too exhausted to handle him herself.

Dorothea enlists two younger women -- Jamie's best friend, Julie (Elle Fanning), who is just a year or two older and strictly platonic, and 20-something punk-rock chick Abbie (Greta Gerwig), who rents a room in Dorothea's house -- to help teach him how to grow up to be a good man. Also on the fringes is another boarder, handyman William (Billy Crudup), who offers his own new-age musings.

Mills sets this in Santa Barbara, Calif., 1979, on the eve of the Reagan revolution, and the liberal despair and ennui of the time feel achingly familiar to viewers experiencing the dawn of the Trump era. Around the film's climax, this extended family gathers around the television set to watch President Carter's infamous "malaise" speech, and Mills lets Carter's admonitions drone on, the voice of a conscience echoing from the past. The characters' divergent reactions to the speech speak volumes about the path liberals would take over the next four decades.

The three women in Jamie's life seem monumental. Bening is an absolute force of nature as the chain-smoking, cynical Dorothea, who is aware that the culture is passing her by. (A scene of her and William struggling to find the entertainment value in a record by the post-punk band the Raincoats lands nicely. Duke Ellington and Fred Astaire are on hand to represent her more traditional sensibilities.) She abdicates some of her maternal roles, thinking that Jamie would be better served by a hipster like Abbie (she lets them go clubbing) and by sweet, safe Julie, who likes to sneak into Jamie's room for sleepovers. Fanning ("Somewhere") captures the insecurity of the blond manic pixie dreamgirl who strings Jamie along but appreciates his friendship. And this is a return to form for Gerwig, with the jangle back in her limbs and nuance in her portrayal of a flustered single woman. As the trailer suggests, this is Bening's showpiece.

Crudup sinks into the role of a fading hunk, caught between the generations of Dorothea and Abbie, though happy to try to bed them both. At one point he laments the fact that he doesn't know how to sustain a romantic relationship once he figures his partner out. At another point, one character wonders aloud about how it is that we become the person we become. As another notes, we can't predict how we'll turn out. The adults tend to flail about as much as our young hero does.

Watching Jamie navigate that analog world while taking notes from his elders can hit close to home for a certain demographic -- notably, 50-something post-punk brats still trying to figure out the opposite sex. Mills is quite skilled at wringing laughs and tears from a basic human story. He is direct and relatable, wistful but not overly nostalgic. His movies are thoughtful and tactile. He's not wallowing in a fizzy past but searching for clues to how he, himself, turned out.

BONUS TRACKS
Talking Heads set the tone early with a needle drop on the vinyl of "Don't Worry About the Government":



Here's the Raincoats song, "Fairytale in the Supermarket":



A powerful closing song, from the Buzzcocks: