20th Century Women

Plot

The story is set in 1979, Santa Barbara, California. Dorothea (Annette Bening) seeks the help of Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and Julie (Elle Fanning) to raise her son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann).

Cast

Development

Mills took inspiration from his mother and sister to create the characters of Dorethea and Abbie, stating : "It felt like I was raised by my mom and sisters, so I was always appealing to women in the punk scene or women in my world. I always leaned to them to figure out my life as a straight white guy. So I wanted to make a movie about that.” While the character of Jamie reflects his own experiences. Mills wrote the character of Julie, by the experiences of one of his friends. Mills also describes the film as a "loveletter" to the women who raised him. Though the film is autobiographical, Mills also notes that it is fictionalized, explaining, "With all these characters, what guides me is the real person. Of course, I’m cinematizing real people, and you can never get them right or show all of their dimensions, but that’s very much what my mom was like." After finishing the script, Mills brought it to Annapurna Pictures who signed onto the film, after liking Mills's previous film Beginners.

Casting

In January 2015, it was announced Mike Mills would write and direct the film, while Megan Ellison, Anne Carey, and Youree Henley would produce the film under their Annapurna Pictures and Archer Gray banners respectively. In May 2015, Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning joined the cast of the film, in which Bening would play the single mother, Gerwig to play a young sophisticated photographer, and Fanning to play a provocative friend of the single mother's teenage son. On August 3, 2015, Billy Crudup was cast in a supporting role.

While preparing for their roles in the film, Bening watched films Mills's mother loved. The two also had extensive talks about Mills's mother. Gerwig prepared for her role, by taking photography lessons learning how to use a camera, listening to records, reading books, and watching films, and also spoke with Mills's sister whom the character is based upon. Fanning was given The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, to prepare.

Filming

Principal photography on the film began on September 8, 2015 in Southern California. Production concluded on October 27, 2015. The film was shot over 35 days, filming mainly took place in Los Angeles, while exteriors where shot in Santa Barbara.

Music

Roger Neill composed the film's score.

Release

In June 2016, A24 acquired U.S distribution rights to the film. The film had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival as the Centerpiece on October 8, 2016. It also screened at the AFI Fest on November 16, 2016. The film was scheduled for a limited release on December 25, 2016, but was pushed back to December 28.

Critical response

20th Century Women received universal acclaim from film critics. It holds a 89% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 119 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "20th Century Women offers Annette Bening a too-rare opportunity to shine in a leading role – and marks another assured step forward for writer-director Mike Mills." On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 83 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Owen Gleiberman of Variety gave the film a positive review, writing: "The best thing about the movie is Bening’s performance as Dorothea Fields, who’s portrayed as a very particular kind of contradictory free spirit. Divorced and proud, with a lot of heart and soul but even more over-sharing flakiness". David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter also gave the film a positive review, writing: "Mills uses some of the same devices as Beginners to illuminate his characters' cultural formation, notably historic montages of their birth years or backgrounds prior to coming together. And he also glances ahead to their future lives, after the arc of the movie. But the quilting is more seamless here because the eccentricities are so integral to the writing and performances."