Director: Kelly Reichardt
Kelly Reichardt has established herself as a poet of silences: both in the literal sense, in which characters fail to summon the right words and so they say nothing at all, and in the way she imagines the sparse, open spaces that permeate her film world. Certain Women is her most direct address in expanding upon the motif in that it tells an anthology of stories in which communication is sloppy and difficult, either resulting in dramatic outbursts (Jared Harris’ pathetic and threatening client) or clumsy gestures (Michelle Williams’ wife attempting to literally rebuild the foundation of a functional family unit). If these first two stories can be met with a distance in that their dramas seem founded on self-delusions, the third of Reichardt’s stories regards a more hopeful struggle against longing. That is, whereas the other two involve the decay of professional and personal relationships, the last story carries with it the naive optimism of the birth of feeling. The way an ambiguous friendship between Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone develops is rendered sweetly by the latter’s silent dedication. And, even if audiences might predict that a last-ditch romantic gesture is ultimately misguided, Gladstone’s rancher is victorious in that she is ultimately the truest to her passions. If Reichardt isn’t attempting a crowd-pleaser in the end (one could imagine that she loves the three women of the film equally), she provides a counterpoint to the pained longing of the previous two vignettes by suggesting that longing can be a vessel for self-growth.
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