Kelly Reichardt is one of those director/writers who has made it their focus to film, the unfilmable, ordinary people in their downtime simply reacting or not reacting to things. This is all well and good, and each piece of Certain Women works beautifully on their own, but as a collection pulled together it feels random and unfocused and not in a good way.
The three stories of Certain Women are all set in and around the same small town in Montana and are also loosely connected (a few side characters show up in different segments which are more of a distraction than a convincing narrative thread). The women of the three stories are Laura (Laura Dern) a personal injury lawyer dealing with a disabled and embittered client who won't accept that he signed away his rights, Gina (Reichardt's muse Michelle Williams, working with her fort the third time) an uptight woman trying to get the material needed for her dream home, and Jamie (newcomer Lily Gladstone, amazing), a lonely rancher who unexpectedly falls for a lawyer she meets in the strangest of circumstances. The stories are all very undramatic and subtle but in Reichardt's hands the material absolutely sings. There is a lot of depth and nuance to these characters and it is wonderful to watch them. Unfortunately she does not afford equal time to all the characters and this has the effect of making her film feel lopsided.
The best segment in the film is the one with Gladstone's rancher, and I sincerely wish that Reichardt had worked out a way to pad it out with 40 more minutes of material because at 50 minutes it is the longest segment by far and it is the most interesting and the most poignant.
