The latest film from Kelly Reichardt confirms the writer-director-editor as one of today’s leading filmmakers an extraordinary director of actors. Based on short stories from Maile Meloy’s collection Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, Certain Women is a tripartite portrait of striving, independent women (Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone) whose lives intersect in suggestive and powerful ways. Eschewing narrative closure, Reichardt connects her characters less through plot than through place, and various illustrations of one of the film’s main themes: deferred desire. Shot against the stunning backdrop of Montana’s mountains and pastoral, big-skied landscapes in ravishing 16mm, this is an elegant and moving work.
Is Certain Women a certified fresh hit? Listen to our review in our March film podcast, it’s 23 seconds in…