Certain Women (2016)

Directed by Kelly Reichardt. Starring Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Lily Gladstone, Michelle Williams, Jared Harris, James LeGros, René Auberjonois, Sarah Rodier, John Getz. [R]

A minimalist triptych of character study scenarios based on three Maile Meloy short stories—Dern is an attorney with a disgruntled and mentally-unstable client (Harris); Williams is a wife and mother who’s belittled or disregarded in (mostly) subtle ways at seemingly every turn; Gladstone is a lonely rancher who tries to forge an intimate connection with a law grad teacher (Stewart). Leisurely-paced and ambiguous, it’s bound to leave some viewers cold, but writer/director Reichardt’s confidence in allowing the characters to come to life organically rather than through melodramatic incidents or forced conflict is refreshing, and patient and empathetic viewers will be rewarded with the sort of stealthy resonance that may take hours or even days to land. The ways in which these three stories only brush up against each other isn’t wholly satisfying—either more interconnectivity or none at all would have made for cleaner storytelling—and there are some half-formed elements in play that should have been clarified or dropped entirely, but it’s also refreshing that Reichardt and company don’t try to either erase or sharpen the ill-defined borders of human lives for the sake of facile resolutions or morals.

79/100