Nice weather down there

20 Century Women

Crit

Careful what you wish for, Mom--or at least what you ask for.

Dorothea (Annette Bening, as good as she has ever been, which is tall, tall cotton), as bruised as she is smart and cool (for 55), feels ill-equipped to bring her son to manhood. Jamie (brilliant newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann) is in fact about as normal as a 15-year-old boy can be in 1979, especially given the circumstances, but Dorothea asks for help from a roomer, Abbie (Greta Gerwig), who's 25 and into punk and feminism, and Julie (Elle Fanning), who is 17 and Jamie's best friend and not-at-all-secret crush, but she likes him too much to have sex with him (raise your hand if you've heard that one, boys and girls), though she has plenty of sex with older boys, as long as they're stupid enough that she can't take them seriously. Did I mention (or need to) that her mother is a therapist?

And then there's William (Billy Crudup), the only central character whose age is not specified, perhaps to leave as indeterminate as possible the relative inappropriatenesses of his involvements with Abbie and Dorothea.

Anyway, Dorothea comes to regret her request, but the fact is Abbie and Julie both do good things for his growth--I would certainly have turned out a better man had my mother had the bravery and good sense to give a portion of my care to two such women when I was 15. And I wouldn't have had any less sex than I did.

This is a nearly great film, which has a regrettable late stretch of excessive patness (including the obligatory scene of everyone dancing and everything being better for it) but more than overcomes that unfortunate turn. Might revise my top ten list for 2016, but I'll wait until Paterson comes to town first.

Trailers

• Lady Macbeth--Connection to Shakespeare seems tenuous; impossible to guess whether it'll be worth seeing.
• T2: Trainspotting--Gosh, yes, it does sound like a bad idea, doesn't it? But Danny Boyle is in charge again, and he's gotten all the principals and lots of the rest of the cast back, so I am as open as a just-spiked vein. Choose life!