So why the title?
Because the film is about the impact three 20TH CENTURY WOMEN have on the boy and his ark, and that boy represents Generation X (which is extremely critical to understanding the epic scope of the film).
And the female characters have arks and evolve.
Jaime's entire existence kept his mom Dorothea connected to the world, kept her mind opened and curious, gave her a reason to live and love, gave her a chance to get to know a man as a child. Dorothea (Annette Bening) finally forms a stable relationship with a man who seems to truly understand her, every birthday until her death he gifts her with a chance to fly a plane and take to the skies, she can finally fly, after having dreamed of becoming a pilot when she left high school because of WWII.
Through Jaime, Abbie relieves her teenage years and reconnects with her female sexuality (something she thought she was stripped of after being told she might not be able to have children), she relives years of self-discovery and revelation that were denied to her because of her cervical cancer and lonely/alienated teenage years. Abbie (Greta Gerwig) breaks out of her depression and expands her artistic horizons beyond the punk scene and personal photos, and gives birth to two children despite cervical cancer.
Through her friendship with Jaime, Julie also gets a chance to see inside the Man as a Child, and learns how to say No (pressure to have sex). Her intimate friendship with him teaches her there are good men in the world, and that there is a real difference between the boys and men (sometimes the boy is the man and the man is the boy). Thanks to Abbie helping Julie (Elle Fanning) obtain birth control pills, Julie takes greater control over her sexuality and overall physical, emotional, psychological well being, which helps her to escape the "slut" trap and shotgun wedding trap and successfully graduate high school and attend NYU, where she meets a real college-educated fellow male student and marries and moves to France where she can feel more comfortable with her sexuality. She escapes having to marry right out of high school (or during high school) to the star quarterback with rocks for brains who is a cheating drunk who beats her and sticks her with 5 kids back-to-back.
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