Writer/director Mike Mills is revisiting his own family history again as the source for his latest movie. It served him well last time when in ‘Beginners’ he told the story of his father who came out as gay when he was 75 years old, garnering an Oscar for Christopher Plummer. This time around Mills’s focus is on his mother, and is set in the summer of 1979 when she tried to adjust to reality of being a single parent who had given birth late in life, and now has to deal with the coming-of-age of her teenage son.
Dorothea the mother (superbly played by Annette Benning) is quite a free spirit and lives with her son Jamie (newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann) in Santa Barbara in a chaotic large house in a state of disrepair. They share their home with Abbie a fiery and rather intense 24 year old artsy photographer (Greta Gerwig) who rents a room, as does William (a very affable Billy Crudup) a hippy handyman who sleeps with Abbie, but really hankers after Dorothea. Completing the menagerie is Jamie’s best friend the rather precocious 17 year old neighbor Julie (Ellie Fanning) who sneaks into his bed every night, but refuses to have sex with him.
Dorothea is desperate to share her sense on unconformity with Josh on every level and even encourages him to skip school whenever he feels, and supplies the excuse note for his teacher. However like any confused teenager, whilst taking advantage of all the freedom he is allowed, he still struggles to break away from the influences of his mother, despite the fact that she is exceptionally openminded about almost everything.
There comes a point in their relationship where Dorothea sensing that she is possibly impinging on Jamie’s growth, inveigles on Abbie and Julie to take an active part in his growing up so that he can reach his full potential. Accepting the disadvantage of being too close to him as his mother, Dorothea pleads with the two young women ‘you get to see him out in the world as a person …. I never will.’
Despite her liberated attitudes, Dorothea is still very much an old-fashioned romantic. She yearns for the days of Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca, chain smokes simply because she started way back before it was considered dangerous, obsessively studies her stocks and shares every single morning, and she is always looking for love, but tires of her beaus very quickly.
Even though this is essentially Jamie’s tale about him transitioning into manhood, the focus is very much on the powerful influence of his mother, and even more so enhanced by the fact that Benning, in a rather stunning pitch perfect performance that will be sure to get her some heavyweight Awards, steals all her scenes with such ease.
Unlike Beginners, this is really a very personal and very entertaining essay from Mills which has very little in terms of actual story. That is not completely a bad thing as what fills the screen is a beautifully composed period piece that will appeal to everyone longing for a nostalgic look back when life as a teenager growing up seemed so much simpler.
