20th Century Women

In 1979 Santa Barbara, a middle-aged divorcée (Annette Bening), her adolescent son (Lucas Jade Zumann), their two boarders (Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup) and the boy’s platonic girlfriend (Elle Fanning) interact haphazardly, bouncing off each other as they alternately tiptoe and stumble toward the people they will eventually become. Writer-director Mike Mills creates a world that feels at once distinctly individual and broadly typical, and it’s the same for his characters: We recognize these quirky-ordinary people, even though we’ve never met anybody exactly like them. Their lives are punctuated by events, though little really “happens” in the movie as a whole; it has the rhythm of life without the forced buildup of melodrama. The result is, like the characters, a little aimless but extremely likeable. J.L.