Those of you who grew up in the pre-Reagan seventies and expect a cozy and nostalgic trip back in time should be forewarned this is not that movie. This is a movie about women living in the "me decade" the way 'Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory' (1971) was about candy making. The fringe characters seemingly ignore the actual predominant cultural influences of the day (hair care, bad fashion and TV watching) that would have been inescapable except to prison inmates and grad students of the day. (It'd be like watching a movie about our present decade ("the teenies"?) but no one having a cell phone.) Similarly, the cultural zeitgeist is inaccurate. For example, the few men in this movie are inconsequential losers marginalized into roles as handymen or therapuetic sexual facilitators. HAH! Everyone knows that men's obseleteness is another decade away when Billy Crystal makes 'When Harry Met Sally' (1989). (But seriously, if any time travellers are reading this, forget Hitler - take out baby Crystal!) Dorothea (Bening) plays a too hip for any room older Mom informed more by pre war America then the affluence and bigness of post war America. She knows what is coming (the 80's?) and worries for her only son. She enlists a rag tag group of strays whose only apparent qualifications are availability and angst (again twenty years to early) to guide the boy into manhood. The predicament for Dorothea is, except for her son, she seems to like not giving a hoot about anything else. She resigns her self to her smoking habit and the fate therein and barters not with money but invites to dinner parties heightened only by the guests own social ineptness. The son (Jamie) lacks the charm or charisma to believe that anyone except Mom would take an interest in him. In fact, 'Jamie' probably grows up to be Billy Crystal's 'Harry'. Greta Gerwig is wonderful at nailing down the wistfully eccentric 'Abbie'. I'd watch her "reading the phone book". You know, because typically one associates reading a phone book as tedious and boring but she is so wonderful that it would still be worth it. Oh, did that explanation seem patronizing and condescending?! Well, that's how I felt watching this movie.
Review of 20th Century Women
