Don't Record It, Be It: Mike Mills' '20th Century Women'

Mike Mills' latest film 20th Century Women is a great time capsule of the sun-drenched and faded 1970s California vibe, on the cusp of the Reagan '80s but holding on to that free-spirited, Me Decade sense of navel gazing with a purpose.

I feel like my longing watching this movie was for an era that is long gone and never to return (short of a Trump-induced, terrifying loss of the internet across America). But is that a bad thing? Women shows people sitting across tables, lounging in beds, and cruising in '70s sedans talking and processing and over-sharing, just not on Facebook.
The film centers around fifty-something, divorced Dorothea (Annette Bening, in another trademark winning, natural performance) and her teenage son Jamie, living in a dumpy, spacious home in 1979 Santa Barbara.

Concerned about her son becoming an aimless, thoughtless grown man, Dorothea has Jamie's BFF Julie (a wonderfully sullen, sedate Elle Fanning, per usual) and Dorothea's twenty-something punky boarder, Abbie (Greta Gerwig, for once, charming me immensely) act as influencers, shapers, and teachers of her only child on how to understand women and how to be a "real man."

Just as lost as Jamie, the young women impart their knowledge of '70s feminism, post-punk music, and Judy Blume books. And as a true sponge, Jamie absorbs this and tests boundaries in equal measure.

Minus the charming Christopher Plummer storyline, the rest of Mills' previous film Beginners (i.e., Ewan McGregor's love life) suffered from a tweeness that rarely surfaces in Women. And that's what makes this film a much more rewarding treasure.

The slight FX in the movie (sped-up film, psychedelic color trails) add to that stoned '70s dreamy vibe of this coming-of-age story. The non-plot of slightly interconnected vignettes may bore or bug some but for me it harnessed the pace of some of those lazy, sun-bleached '70s films like Breaking Away or something with a teenage Jodie Foster.

The rambling, cigarette-and wine-soaked storyline is solidified in Benning's natural, melancholy performance as mother, teacher, wise soul, and free-spirited oddball. But she remains hopeful of her ragtag household.

The quaint vibe of huddling around a TV set to watch a Presidential speech, or dancing around bedrooms trying to dissect her son's punk vinyl playing on the beat-up turntable, all this nostalgia is palpable in Women for a slowed-down, pre-plugged in life. The story seems to revel in hands-off parenting, trial-and-error life lessons, and driving along the Pacific with no intention to record or photograph anything with a phone, and all with a message ahead of its time: Don't record it, be it.