Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women (2016) is a masterpiece of intuitive plotting. The one part that doesn’t feel complete is Jamie’s (Lucas Jade Zumann) arc.
The film is a reminiscence on Jamie’s 1979 home education in gender dynamics and Women 101. It’s tinged in nostalgia, from the vibe of the opening aerial shot (cinematography by Sean Porter) to the concluding voiceovers (sound designed by Frank Gaeta). The nostalgia also foreshortens Jamie’s most personally meaningful lesson.
Fifteen, he’s in love with seventeen-year-old school friend Julie (Elle Fanning), who deals with her own shit with casual sex, just not with Jamie. In her introductory scene, when Jamie gets frisky, she shuts him down, saying that sex would ruin their close friendship. That dynamic persists throughout.
In Julie’s key scene, she impulsively grabs onto Abbie’s (Greta Gerwig) rather successful attempt to normalize the word “menstruation” during dinner conversation to desultorily monologue about how she discarded her virginity at fourteen in a physically painful experience. Only Abbie supports her right to tell her story; Jamie seems particularly miffed. In the next scene, in his rooms, he almost calls her a slut. And later at a getaway motel, an almost naked Julie again rebuffs his advances by saying Jamie’s just like all the other men, despite how reconstructed he appears. He leaves in a huff.
It seems the film is saying patriarchal attitudes toward women’s sexuality are founded on sexual jealousy, and Jamie’s leaving is his finally coming to terms with the kind of relationship Julie wants. But then why is it the only scene where Julie undresses before bed, despite sneaking into Jamie’s room to spend almost every night? Moreover, their next scene together is in ensemble, and a brief shared glance suggests things are back to the way they were before. But the status quo was unstable to begin with. How does Jamie get from there to, as his concluding voiceover says, happily married to someone else?
In other words, if sexual jealousy is the problem, the film doesn’t show us how it’s overcome, though almost every other aspect of Jamie’s feminist education is sketched. I recognize that the film is really about the mother–son relationship (mother Dorothea played by Annette Bening), with the education as proxy, but in such a sweetly nostalgic and uplifting film, this one missing piece leaves a sour taste.
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