Dialogic Cinephilia: 20th Century Women (USA: Mike Mills, 2016)

20th Century Women (USA: Mike Mills, 2016: 118 mins)

Adams, Amy, et al. "Watch Isabelle Huppert, Emma Stone, Amy Adams & More Discuss Acting in 50-Minute Roundtable." Film Stage (January 30, 2017) [" Isabelle Huppert (Elle), Emma Stone (La La Land), Amy Adams (Arrival), Natalie Portman (Jackie), Naomie Harris (Moonlight), Annette Bening (20th Century Women), and Taraji P. Henson (Hidden Figures)."]

Alpert, Roger. "20th Century Women: Gender and Politics in History." Jump Cut #58 (Winter 2017-2018) ["Mike Mills scripted and directed 20th Century Women. It is both a personal “love letter” to Mills’ mother and sister who had raised him as well as an examination of gender inculture, an examination that Mills had already begun in his autobiographical Beginners (2010) about his terminally ill father. For those aware of its autobiographical elements, the movie sounds a personal note, teasing the viewer to differentiate between what’s “real” and what’s “fiction,” even as it examines broader cultural issues. For those unaware, it both possesses the emotional appeal of the classical Hollywood melodrama as well as evokes the independent, innovative filmmaking of such “women’s films” as Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), Antonia’s Line (1995), and Certain Women (2016). The movie avoids the escapism of contemporary Hollywood fiction, and Mills has instead sought to partake of the independent New Hollywood cinema of the 1970s in which male directors, such as Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese, transcended through formal innovations the constraints of a conservative Hollywood. Like all of these independent, innovative film directors, Mills in 20th Century Women portrays a personal drama that is simultaneously political. The movie entertains even as it seeks to enlighten its audience about gender."]

Barton-Fumo, Margaret, Molly Haskell and Violet Lucca. "Women in New Hollywood." Film Comment Podcast (February 7, 2017) ["Road-tripping crises of masculinity soundtracked by classic rock, Harvey Keitel making up for his sins in the streets—a laundry list of 1970s New Hollywood highlights can tend to lack a nuanced female presence. But the ’70s also gave us Wanda, Puzzle of a Downfall Child, Girlfriends, A Woman Under the Influence, and even Five Easy Pieces, all of which explore female identity in the era of second-wave feminism. This episode of the Film Comment podcast spirals outwards from From Reverence to Rape author Molly Haskell’s essay on Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women and accompanying interview with Annette Bening, in the January/February issue, taking a closer look at depictions of women in New Hollywood. Some of these were “neo-women’s films,” dealing with disillusioned housewives fleeing the domestic sphere; others took on female friendship without turning a blind eye to its messiness, a line that runs through Thelma and Louise, Frances Ha, and Broad City."]

Chang, Justin. "Annette Bening is the Pitch-Perfect Centerpiece of 20th Century Women." The Los Angeles Times (December 27, 2016)

Chocano, Carina. "'I Got Beat Up For Wearing This Shirt': Filmmaker Mike Mills shares seven objects that inspired 20th Century Women." The Cut (January 4, 2017)

Crozer-De Rosa, Sharon. "What are the four waves of feminism? And what comes next?" University of Wollongong, Australia (March 8, 2024) ["In Western countries, feminist history is generally packaged as a story of “waves”. The so-called first wave lasted from the mid-19th century to 1920. The second wave spanned the 1960s to the early 1980s. The third wave began in the mid-1990s and lasted until the 2010s. Finally, some say we are experiencing a fourth wave, which began in the mid-2010s and continues now."]