CERTAIN WOMEN (2015) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Kelly Reichardt
Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart,
Jared Harris, Lily Gladstone, James Le Gros,
Rene Auberjonois, Sara Rodier, John Getz
Three short stories set in Montana, about three women whose lives peripherally intersect. Laura Dern plays an attorney with a client who's angry and out of control. Michelle Williams plays a wife and mother hoping to buy a load of sandstone from an old man whose mind is no longer tracking very well. Kristen Stewart plays a lawyer teaching a night class where she attracts the attention of a solitary rancher played by Lily Gladstone. The stories are as spare as the landscape, and the acting and execution are masterful, the revelation being Gladstone, whose beautifully contained performance captures the quiet agony of somebody who knows that what she's after is out of reach, but can't help longing for it, anyway. Reichardt's sense of place is exquisite, reflected (often literally) in Christopher Blauvelt's camerawork. Montana in all its lonely, windswept vastness isn't just a geographical connector here. It's the heart and soul of the film.
