Sound the alarms: there's a fresh new reason to celebrate Annette Bening. Following in the footsteps of last year's selection of Steve Jobs, the New York Film Festival has chosen Mike Mills' 20th Century Women as its 2016 Centerpiece, which stars The Bening as a single mother raising her son in 1979 Santa Barbara, co-habiting with a Bowie-cut Greta Gerwig, nomadic carpenter Billy Crudup, and frequent house guest Elle Fanning. We've been anxiously awaiting Mills' follow up to the intimate, structurally adventurous tone poem that is Beginners for a few years now, and NYFF's programming pick (and description of the film as a vibrantly alive time capsule, plus taste-maker A24's acquisition) signals a strong indication that it's been worth the wait. Imagining The Bening caught at the crux of cultural, decade-splitting identities, and strapped into denim overalls to boot, would be enough reason to anticipate the film, but the thought of another story stripped from the personal headlines of Mills' own life and translated into pure cinema has us downright salivating. I can smell the burnt sage from here.
