Certas Mulheres

In my admittedly subjective opinion, Certain Women is an overrated movie. I expect that certain social justice warriors and some feminists will be attracted to it because it presents and it frames the vignettes in ways that are supposed to tell the stories of the characters depicted therein from a gynocentric perspective and, indeed, people who don't consider themselves to be social justice warriors or feminists should be able to pick up on that, but in the end, it all seems a little too self-conscious and affected for my tastes. I'd take a pass on it if I were you.

Kelly Reichardt is one of those director/writers who has made it their focus to film, the unfilmable, ordinary people in their downtime simply reacting or not reacting to things. This is all well and good, and each piece of Certain Women works beautifully on their own, but as a collection pulled together it feels random and unfocused and not in a good way.

The three stories of Certain Women are all set in and around the same small town in Montana and are also loosely connected (a few side characters show up in different segments which are more of a distraction than a convincing narrative thread). The women of the three stories are Laura (Laura Dern) a personal injury lawyer dealing with a disabled and embittered client who won't accept that he signed away his rights, Gina (Reichardt's muse Michelle Williams, working with her fort the third time) an uptight woman trying to get the material needed for her dream home, and Jamie (newcomer Lily Gladstone, amazing), a lonely rancher who unexpectedly falls for a lawyer she meets in the strangest of circumstances. The stories are all very undramatic and subtle but in Reichardt's hands the material absolutely sings. There is a lot of depth and nuance to these characters and it is wonderful to watch them. Unfortunately she does not afford equal time to all the characters and this has the effect of making her film feel lopsided.

The best segment in the film is the one with Gladstone's rancher, and I sincerely wish that Reichardt had worked out a way to pad it out with 40 more minutes of material because at 50 minutes it is the longest segment by far and it is the most interesting and the most poignant.

Greetings again from the darkness. This is surely one of the most intriguing movies of the year that is about women and by a woman. Writer/director Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy, 2008) has adapted the short stories from Maile Meloy into a film with 3 segments focusing on the daily perseverance of three women in small town Montana (including a rare Wyoming joke).

The first segment has lawyer Laura Dern returning to the office after an … umm … "long lunch meeting". Waiting for her is her client played by Jared Harris ("Mad Men"). The frustration between the two is palpable. Things take a turn for the worse as the sheriff calls Dern to the scene where Harris has taken a hostage at gunpoint. The issues on display here include the lack of respect for a female attorney, her unsatisfying personal life, and the one-way trust that can happen in times of desperation.

In the next story, we follow Michelle Williams and her husband James LeGros as they meet with a lonely elderly neighbor (Rene Auberjonis) and offer to buy some limestone blocks that have been sitting on his property for decades. The subtlety of the conversation embodies the missing respect and power of Ms. Williams' character.

Emotions are exploding beneath the surface in the third segment featuring horse handler Lily Gladstone as she stumbles into a class being taught by Kristen Stewart, and is immediately captivated by the smart young teacher. Where this attraction leads is further commentary on the challenges faced by those trying to escape the daily drudgery of their lives.

The above recaps don't come close to capturing the extraordinary quiet and stillness that director Reichardt uses in an emotionally powerful manner. These three women are all intelligent and filled with both pride and visceral disappointment … each quietly suffering, yet trudging forward with the emptiness each day brings. They each have a feeling of isolation – even if they aren't truly alone, and failed or lackluster relationships certainly play a role.

The acting and cinematography (film, not digital!) is as expert as the directing. Ms. Gladstone is truly a standout by saying few words out loud, but speaking volumes with her open and pleading eyes. The nuance of each scene is where the most interest is, and the overall mood of the characters and tone of the stories overcome the fact that we are plopped into these lives with little or no backstory. As each one softly crashes (two figuratively, one literally), we understand these are the faces of strong women who will continue to do what's necessary … even if that's shoveling horse poop. The film is dedicated to Ms. Reichardt's dog Lucy (a key to her personal and professional life).

Director Kelly Reicart knows strong women and the strong circumstances they've faced moving West (Meek's Cutoff) and more than 100 years later the modern Northwest (Certain Women). Big Sky Country, Montana, is the modern setting: Billings, Bozeman, and environs, the places where three women are ignored by men, misunderstood by both men and women, and call many of the shots that may end up putting food on their tables and courage in their hearts.

Although feminists should be proud of the three heroines in Certain Women, their actions are not so much the stuff of heroics as they mostly navigate around misogyny and sloth in a world that mostly listens to men first even if the women are right most of the time.

Laura Wells (Laura Dern) is an attorney with not really a thriving practice, but she gets along. One client, Fuller (Jared Harris), is a worker trying in vain to get more compensation for an accident while he slowly becomes derailed. In the most fraught incident of the trilogy, she must enter a building with a bullet-proof vest to face him as he holds a guard hostage. That she is the one to confront him, and not a crisis squad, is one of the stories' touches that clarifies why the heroines are "certain" women.

Gina Lewis (Michelle Williams) is building a prairie house, part of which will be built with a pile of stones, she, not her husband, tries to convince an old man to sell. Her quiet resolve in the face of mostly feckless men is not so much heroic as it is her certainty that she must be the strong one.

Jamie (Lily Gladstone), a portly ranch hand who falls for an evening school teacher-lawyer, Beth Travis (Kristen Stewart), is the least glamorous of the three (no I Phone for this cowgirl) but with an inner depth that eclipses the other two. Jamie and Beth's evening ride to the diner on a horse is romantic in a subtle way rarely seen before.

If you think I haven't described anything dramatically worthy of a full-length motion picture, you're right. The real drama bleeds out of the actors' interior depictions, the personal strength that overcomes diminishment by the vast plains, snow-capped mountains, and weak men.

Because the three episodes are derived from native Maile Maloy's short stories, Certain Women is a tour de force of feminism disguised as rambling stories of women making a hard living in a hard West. Hooray for them as the cowboys and the horses are not the real forces at work.

It doesn't seem as though indie darling Kelly Reichardt will be changing her directing tact anytime soon.

Becoming well known for her intimate, slow-moving and character driven character studies (that more often than not star Michelle Williams), Reichardt's film aren't for everyone but there is often a quiet power to Reichardt's stories that can't be denied.

Hitting a peak with lost dog drama Wendy and Lucy and losing her way with the sleep inducing female driven western Meek's Cutoff, Certain Women is middle of the road Reichardt that see's the Florida born filmmaker examine the lives of 3 separate women in the American state of Montana, each going through their own various journey's in this great big world.

There's barely an ounce of character development or backstory as we're thrust into these women's everyday lives, from Laura Dern's lawyer Laura dealings with Jared Harris's potentially dangerous client Fuller, Michelle William's hardworking mother and wife Gina and Lily Gladstone's The Rancher's strange fondness for Kristin Stewart's class instructor Elizabeth and while these women's stories are intriguing to a sense, there's never a good enough set-up or reward to truly make this intertwining story truly memorable.

As per usual with a Reichardt film, Certain Women looks great in a quietly poetic way and the acting is universally good, without ever delivering any big character moments or situations for Reichardt's cast to shine at their brightest levels but it's hard to fully invest yourself into a film that feels rather emotionally cold and a problem that sometimes manifests itself in such narrative structures, some of Certain Women's most interesting plot points seem to end as we're thrust back into another characters life, making us feel as though we're being a little ripped off by a story that had more to give us.

Final Say –

Reichardt's ponderous and deliberately paced drama will be a treat for her small yet passionate fan base while for the rest of us, Certain Women is a well-intentioned and finely acted drama that never hooks us into its world in a way that would've made it more readily accessible and easily recommendable.

2 ½ short-legged farm dogs out of 5