20th Century Women

20TH CENTURY WOMEN (Mike Mills, 2016)

Fifty-five-year-old Dorothea (Annette Bening) is raising her fifteen-year-old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) on her own in 1979 Santa Barbara, but as he is coming of age in 20TH CENTURY WOMEN, she worries that she isn’t doing enough to help him become the man she would like him to become. The only man with any consistency in her life is William (Billy Crudup), a handyman renting a room in Dorothea’s large home. While he is the kind of masculine and thoughtful type she’d like Jamie to model, her son doesn’t really have anything to do with him.

Instead Dorothea turns to the two other female presences around Jamie on a daily basis. Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a photographer in her mid-twenties, is also a boarder and fulfills something of a cool older sister role. Seventeen-year-old Julie (Elle Fanning) is Jamie’s closest friend. She often sneaks into his room late at night to talk and sleep by his side. Although Jamie wishes they were romantically and physically involved, Julie insists that their closeness is strictly friendship. Jamie listens closely to the guidance of these women, hoping in part that taking their advice will help him develop a closer relationship with his mother.

The communal atmosphere in Dorothea’s house extends to the perspectives the film collects. 20TH CENTURY WOMEN unspools like a memoir with multiple authors, as the most central characters contribute voiceovers about the situation at this specific point in time and what the future holds for them. Dorothea and Jamie are the nucleus, but those orbiting them for this fleeting moment adopt a primary role from time to time. Writer-director Mike Mills builds the fluctuating dynamic by being deliberate in revealing the protagonists’ connections, which often aren’t what they might appear to be on first glance.

Mills jettisons some of the affectations that marked his previous film, BEGINNERS, resulting in a looser tone that rides the wave these characters have caught. Although he shares how things will turn out for those in the household, there’s no sense of grand design in getting them there. 20TH CENTURY WOMEN takes a snapshot of a pivotal time but not one with an accompanying a map to follow. All of the characters share a rudderless quality as they live through a transition they might sense but are impotent to steer through.

Despite the stylistic flourishes that might stake a directorial voice, 20TH CENTURY WOMEN is rooted in the performances. As a first-time mother at 40 and a child of the Depression who feels attracted and resistant to a more freewheeling life, Dorothea straddles the generational line. She wants to understand the appeal of Black Flag but is more partial to the more tuneful songs of Talking Heads. Bening displays Dorothea’s struggle to integrate open-minded and more rigid parenting as loving and present yet emotionally cool and inexplicably distant. It’s a hard balance to strike but one that shows why Jamie searches for a tighter bond with his mother. Zumann plays Jamie with a sponge-like quality that is endearing rather than needy. Fanning finds the perilousness of the idealized, self-possessed girl who is racked with her own neuroses. Gerwig inhabits the restlessness of not yet living how you envisioned adulthood. Crudup exudes the nature of a blue collar sage, yet like everyone else, William is merely drifting. For as much uncertainty and tension they face, Mills uses the voiceovers, with their future knowledge, to reassure that it’s OK if we can’t plot every step through the world.

Grade: B

Dedication

DEDICATION (Justin Theroux, 2007)

Children's book author Henry Roth (Billy Crudup) finds himself in a bind when his illustrator and best friend Rudy Holt (Tom Wilkinson) dies. Henry is prone to crude outbursts and eccentric behavior, such as stacking books on his chest to comfort himself, which impede his ability to work with a new collaborator.

With the deadline bearing down on Henry for his latest book about Marty the Beaver, editor Arthur Planck (Bob Balaban) assigns Lucy Reilly (Mandy Moore) the unenviable task of replacing Rudy. The ample compensation she's offered will allow Lucy to break free from the controlling grip of her mother (Dianne Wiest), but it will be hard-earned considering the insults she has to endure from Henry.

Although positioned as a quirky take on relationships, DEDICATION'S romance isn't all that different from the professional bond that becomes more personal in MUSIC AND LYRICS. Works fades into the background as the unlikely lovers learn more about each other. Where the Hugh Grant-Drew Barrymore film is like enjoying a fizzy bottle of pop, DEDICATION is akin to taking a few swigs of vinegar, though.

Still, director Justin Theroux's film sticks to romantic comedy traditions and is rooted in two time-honored clichés. Two people who dislike one another will fall madly in love, and the love of a good woman will be the saving grace for a damaged man. DEDICATION'S problem isn't its idealized conception of love but the thoroughly unconvincing way in which it is realized. Lucy takes Henry's verbal abuse with relatively little objection, which might be believable since she stands to rake in a couple hundred thousand dollars for her troubles, but the affection she develops for him is harder to rationalize.

At a lean 95 minutes, DEDICATION is both overstuffed and undercooked. (Its running time was 111 minutes when it played festivals, which may explain why this version feels incomplete.) In addition to the central concerns--Henry and Lucy's relationship and their progress on the book--there are also subplots about Henry's emotional health in general, his coming to terms with Rudy's death, Lucy's fights with her intrusive mother, and her confusion regarding an old thesis adviser (Martin Freeman) who wants to rekindle their affair. Cramming in these elements means giving short shrift to all of them, including the primary thrust of the film.

Theroux energetically directs DEDICATION, and the Deerhoof-laden soundtrack freshens and enhances the spiky tone in the narrative. Like many actors who step behind the camera, Theroux attends to the performances and gets good work from his cast. Crudup is very mannered but keeps the character's tics under control. He gets a nice scene when Henry declares his feelings near the end. It's not an easy admission for him to make, and Crudup almost redeems the film's shortcomings with this moment alone. Moore does the best she can with an underwritten part. Wilkinson sparks the film to life even if his character is dead during most of it. Balaban gives the kind of sly comedic turn expected whenever he appears in films. Only Wiest seems out of place, a matter due more to her character belonging in a more conventional picture.

DEDICATION bears the earmarks of a festival movie that stands out on the crowded circuit, where seeing four or five films in a day is common, but has its weaknesses revealed outside of that experience. Performance-driven by a name cast and quirky enough to seem unique, it's watchable, if not altogether likable. Separated from the festival hothouse atmosphere and viewed on its own merits, DEDICATION can be better seen for what it is: a director's distinct but flawed debut and actor's workshop.

Grade: C