I didn’t know Mike Mills, the writer/director of 2010's Beginners, had a new movie in the pipeline—let alone one being released this year, and especially not one that stars Annette Bening—but he does! It’s called 20th Century Women, its first trailer was released today, and it looks like it’ll be a charming little amuse-bouche during this year’s awards season.
Here’s the official synopsis of the film:
Set in Santa Barbara, the film follows Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening), a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie (newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann, in a breakout performance) at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women in Jamie’s upbringing – via Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields’ home, and Julie (Elle Fanning), a savvy and provocative teenage neighbor.
20th Century Women is a poignant love letter to the people who raise us—and the times that form us—as this makeshift family forges fragile connections that will mystify and inspire them through their lives.
“I think having your heart broken is a tremendous way to learn about the world,” Bening tells her son near the end of the trailer. Finding something beautiful in the face of personal heartbreak appears to be a favorite theme of Mills’s, and I can’t wait to give this movie a watch or two.
