Annette Bening gives a career best performance in the film 20th Century Women

REVIEW: Annette Bening makes the most of a fascinating role and lifts an already superb supporting cast in 20th Century Women.

20th CENTURY WOMEN (M)

Director: Mike Mills (Beginners)

Starring: Annette Bening, Lucas Jade Zermann, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Elle Fanning.

Rating: four-and-a-half stars

Verdict: Letting him go is letting him grow

SOME films inspired by actual events are content if they deliver just the one relatively accurate slice of life.

This warm, funny, inquisitive and poignant 20th Century Women serves up so many sumptuous slices at once, you may as well call it a complete cake.

Writer-director Mike Mills is out to capture the unusual way in which he was raised by his mother in the late 1970s.

This marks the second occasion where the filmmaker has raided his family history for inspiration: 2012’s brilliant Beginners chronicled how Mills’ dad (a role which won veteran Christopher Plummer an Oscar) came out of the closet at age 75.

Billy Crudup, Elle Fanning, Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Lucas Jade Zermann star in 20th Century Women.

As great as that movie was, 20th Century Women is even better. The reason why is the work of a superb Annette Bening in a fascinating lead role.

This is the kind of fully-rounded, yet open-ended part that performers are prepared to wait their entire career for. You can sense from the outset that Bening is determined not to blow it.

Bening plays Dorothea, a free-spirited single mother who has come to the conclusion that she may not be the best person to be overseeing the emotional nurture and instruction of her only child.

Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) has just turned 15, and is not what anyone would call a problem teenager. However, Dorothea can already see glimpses of the man he might become, and it worries her she might be a road block to his final destination.

Lucas Jade Zumann’s Jamie tries to ignore the words of his mum Dorothea (Bening).

So she makes a radical move: every resident of the ramshackle boarding house she runs will share in the responsibility of raising Jamie.

The contribution of each unofficial guardian brings something different to Dorothea’s experiment.

Bening’s Dorothea outlines the future guardian situation to Greta Gerwig’s Abbie and Elle Fanning’s Julie.

As the film enters a vividly atmospheric final act, it turns out Jamie isn’t the only one who has some growing up to do.

The contribution of each unofficial guardian brings something different to Dorothea’s experiment. As the film enters a vividly atmospheric final act, it turns out Jamie isn’t the only one who has some growing up to do.

Bening’s presence is so commanding that the pieces of what might have been a puzzling coming-of-age tale just keep locking into place wherever she goes.

A tremendous support cast (Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Elle Fanning) all walk taller and loom larger simply by sharing the screen with a flawless Bening. Highly recommended as one of the year’s best.

Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and Julie (Elle Fanning) in a scene from 20th Century Women.

Originally published as Annette Bening gives a career best performance in the film 20th Century Women