Review: Certain Women
Command of craft doesn't necessarily translate into a compelling film. Take Certain Women, the latest slow burn dissection from Kelly Reichardt. There's not a significant fault to be found in Reichardt's rendering but its admittedly admirable spare and unyielding approach requires a patience that may not necessarily be wholly rewarded.
The film is divided into three parts - each one adapted from a short story by Maile Meloy and each anchored by a female protagonist. The first involves small-claims lawyer Laura Wells (Laura Dern), first seen in a post-coital rendezvous with married lover Ryan Lewis (James Le Gros). Their separation in the frame - she's in the bedroom, he's in the bathroom - signals the disconnect that is prevalent between all the characters in the film. Very rarely does anyone look each other in the eye in this film - they look and talk past one another, and proximity is strictly physical. Such is the case with Laura and the two leading men in her life, one being Ryan, the other being her client Fuller (Jared Harris). Fuller insists on pursuing an injury claim despite Laura's insistence that his acceptance of a prior payment for damages prevents him from winning the claim. Fuller appears to accept this without protest once Laura's male colleague outlines the reality, though we soon realise that his acquiescence is but the prelude to more desperate measures.
The second episode features Reichardt muse Michelle Williams as Gina, the wife of Laura's lover. She appears a decent and ordinary woman - oblivious to her husband's infidelity, exasperated by her daughter's never-ending tetchiness, and presently obsessed with building a house in the country using only repurposed native materials. To that end, she has set her sights on a pile of sandstone owned by an elderly local named Albert (Rene Auberjonois). Her charming but ruthless manipulation of Albert demonstrates the self-serving streak that runs through even the most well-intentioned as well as how history is too easily erased (the sandstone bricks were once part of a local schoolhouse).
The last segment revolves around a nameless Native American horse rancher (Lily Gladstone), whose adoration of recent law school graduate Beth (Kristen Stewart) is by turns sweet and stalkerish. Beth lives several towns over, a commute that makes her dissatisfaction with teaching education law to self-interested school teachers all too understandable. She and the rancher get to know each other over post-class meals at a local diner - Stewart's Beth has an interesting gesture of wiping her mouth with a napkin still wrapped around utensils - but the rancher's romantic pursuit is made difficult by Beth abruptly leaving her job.
Quietness and everyday sorrow have been hallmarks of Reichardt's work and she continues to display her mastery of depicting the almost peripheral events that mark ordinary lives. An image of a train passing opens the film and that train comes to symbolise the tragedy that quietly underpins most lives - that life remains fundamentally the same despite the increments of passion and happiness we experience. The deliberate pacing may frustrate but the performances enthrall, with Reichardt's quartet of actresses crafting affecting portraits of women surviving the obstacles and getting on with their lives.
Certain Women
Directed by: Kelly Reichardt
Written by: Kelly Reichardt; based on the short stories by Maile Meloy
Starring: Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, Lily Gladstone, Jared Harris, Rene Auberjonois, James Le Gros
