****
Dir: Mike Mills (15, 118 mins)
A coming of age story set in the 1970s with some superb performances, 20th Century Women manages to be both intimate and epic in its scope. Three women played by Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning help Lucas Jade Zumann become a man. Bening plays his mother, overprotective but also a free spirit, someone who has cut themselves off from love for the sake of her child. She realises she can’t be everything to him so enlists the help of troubled lodger Greta Gerwig, a photographer with secrets in her past. She takes him to gigs, gets him into punk whilst he moons after Elle Fanning, a girl he loves. She treats him as a confidant, a soul mate, but refuses to have sex with him, fearing it will spoil what they have. Unfolding like a John Updike novel, this is a many layered story of family, America and the changing role of women born into different generations. Rich and moving with Bening brilliant as ever.
Opens Feb 10