Certain Women

Director: Kelly Reichardt

2016 / 107min / DCP

Based on the Montana-set short stories of Maile Meloy, Reichardt’s stoic, sensitive triptych offers minutely detailed character studies of contemporary western women played by Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, and a heartbreaking Lily Gladstone, as well as a panoramic portrait of a Big Sky Country divided between the monied white-collar city and a blue-collar rural lifestyle that’s remained largely unchanged for over a century. Appearing in the film’s bookending episodes as an overtaxed Livingston, Montana lawyer drawn into a dangerous confrontation with a former client, Dern is something like the soul of this film about feminine perseverance, sighing, “It would be so lovely think that, if I were a man, I could explain the law and people would listen… that would be so restful.”