1. 20th Century Women was a delightful surprise for me. I didn’t really want to go see it. The
title didn’t appeal to me - who wants to watch a movie titled whatever- women?
After the horror of "The
Women" and the much, much better but still not very enjoyable Certain Women, I felt like I had it with whatever-women
movies. Plus the description: "a single mom parents her teenage son along
with two young women who help her " made me worry even more. And
then I saw the name Greta Gerwig. Miss Gerwig usually makes me feel really irritated
with movies she is in, since I find her performance insufferable. Not for a
lack of talent, she certainly is a very talented lady, but something about her
usual manners rubs me to wrong way. And its hard to say why. Maybe it is because more often than not she is cast as somewhat neurotic (and to me one-dimensional, therefore uninteresting) basket case. And I was afraid it was going to be the same this time around.
2. Well I couldn’t have been more wrong. On everything. The movie
broke the spell of whatever-women flicks being bad. The description of the plot,
while accurate, cannot communicate the beauty of the film and the depth of the
characters portrayed in it. So: don’t be put off by it, there is no need. And
no, you do not need to be a woman or a feminist, to enjoy the movie. It’s a "normal" coming of age film. While the
movie does mention the word “feminism“ quite often, it is not a
"feminist" movie (certainly not in the misused scary way), and what’s more
important - it can make fun of itself, its female protagonists and even feminism.
A quality that, I find, the real-life examples of feminists often seem to
lack.
