Film: '20th Century Women'

I'd been lured into thinking that this might be a film of real 'quality', and the further enticement of Annette Bening as its main star made it pretty well irresistible. 
Perhaps I didn't dig deep enough to reach the quality 'seam' because it struck me as being one of those lofty 'art-house' films which hoodwinks the audience into believing they are watching something truly exceptional, and those who do not appreciate it are too scared of saying so for fear of being categorised as intellectually wanting. Maybe I lack the necessary quality of aestheticism which one needs to understand its profundity? 
However, I don't mean to make it sound like an out-and-out dud. It's very far from being that.

Santa Barbara 1979. Divorced, chain-smoking, 55-year old Dorothea (Bening) is bringing up her 15 year old son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) in a sort of commune - though each with their own separate sleeping areas - with two other young women, a budding photographer (Greta Gerwig) who wants to capture her life in pictures by irritatingly aiming her camera at everything she sees, and a messed-up, promiscuous, younger know-it-all (Elle Fanning) who regularly sleeps with Jamie though they purposely don't engage in any sexual activity. There's also a lodger/general handyman and ex-hippie (Billy Crudup).
Dorothea has concerns for her son's development, not because he's living in such a predominantly female household but because she feels he's alienating himself in his interests, such as his liking of the then fashionable 'punk' which she's unable to grasp, making him appear an increasing riddle to her. 
The film covers only a short period, showing the various social activities of and interchanges between, mainly, the three women and the son. There's little progress or development in any of the characters during the film's two hours. At the end they're all very much at the same point as they were at the start. 

Annette Bening, despite spending much of her screen time without make-up and with hair dishevelled, is still a magnetic presence, easily dominating the rest of this ensemble cast. But what was it all for? I ask myself. There were only a couple of really dramatic events, but they soon passed without casting a shadow. It was all a bit inconsequential to my way of thinking.

Director Mike Mills is best known for having made 'Beginners' (2010) in which Christopher Plummer won an Oscar (as an aged father very belatedly coming out as gay). I thought this latest film of his nowhere near as interesting, though it's generally receiving reviews for which many other films must long. The reasons for this evade me.............5.5.