Certain Women (2016)

As ever with Reichart, it seems that "what passes for resolution often involves a kind of trailing off to an uncertain future". I did smirk a little when I realised that Michelle Williams' Gina is attempting to source "authentic" sandstone foundations for her family home when she should perhaps be more worried about the foundations of her marriage. It's then further ironic when we realise that this is to be their second home… very droll.

Doing a small amount of digging into the film's geography, it seems that Kristen Stewart's Beth was exaggerating how long it would take her to get home: in perfect conditions and without stopping, Google Maps suggests the drive from Belfry, MT to Livingston, MT is two-and-a-half hours, not four. Then again, I'd probably find myself rounding up in order to beat a timely retreat from Belfry, being as it would represent a professionally and emotionally awkward situation.

Perhaps also of note is that Reichardt changed the rancher's gender in the third segment compared to the original short story by Maile Meloy, apparently via Todd Haynes's suggestion. I'm told that 'Chet', the young man smitten with Beth in the original story, actually lands a kiss: Jamie's ambiguous motion with the scarf is surely an improvement.

That Reichardt has been making movies her way and on her wavelength for nearly 25 years, and has only now really “broken through” beyond rarefied art-house circles due to her ability to wrangle A-list talent for her B-minus budgeted productions, is a testament to talent, self-determination, and judicious sense of adaptability—all of which could be descriptors of the people we see onscreen in Certain Women.

— Adam Nayman (Reverse Shot)

Every single character, even the minor ones, feel like they exist before they come into frame and keep going long after. If anything, it’s the male characters who reach finality—the female ones keep moving forward to the next client, project, and day on the farm.

— Brian Tellerico (RogerEbert.com)

The men in Certain Women don’t lose their temper, drink, or hit their wives or daughters, but there persists nonetheless a rift, as they frequently contribute negativity in their failure to see or hear, to be stoic instead of kind, thanks to some bullshit about strength in rigidity handed down to them by their forefathers. But Reichardt is too sharp and too empathetic simply to skewer her often cloddish male characters; it’s in the silences and the looks and missed connections that she sketches the battlefield.

[…]

Beth is blind to Jamie’s overtures, and a little bewildered, and Jamie has nothing left in her arsenal but to pivot and retreat. The universe recognizes the noble quality of Jamie’s yearning, however, and rewards her with the safe respite of a soft crash into a nearby cornfield, cutting a jagged line of collapsed cornstalk.

— Jaime N. Christley & Chuck Bowen (Slant Magazine)

The train, a foundational component to cinema from The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (1895) to Snowpiercer (2013), drives so many films with its inherent forward momentum that it could be a metaphor for mainstream cinema itself.

[…]

On its surface, [the second segment] might be the most undramatic and least pointed of the three stories in Certain Women, until we remember that her husband spent a recent afternoon with Laura.

[…]

Reichardt, ever following the influence of Robert Bresson and Yasujiro Ozu with her work, once more explores the inner lives of her characters, the restrained drama found in everyday life. [She] finds the root of her characters in quieter moments: a long shot of Dern walking around a mall alone; Williams taking a morning walk by a stream, dreaming of what her house will look like; Gladstone going through the ranch’s routine, dropping hay and brushing horses. There’s more said about these characters in scenes that feel removed from the patterns of traditional cinematic drama than those of higher stakes.

[…]

In a final coda, Reichardt returns to each of the three main characters and finds them serving food—Laura brings Fuller a vanilla shake, Gina serves burgers to her family, and the rancher supplies the horses with feed. Whatever their experiences, the requirements of daily life persist.

— Brian Eggert (Deep Focus Review)

[Finally], the light goes dark, replaced with the words “For Lucy,” in memory of Reichardt’s dog, the eponymous star of her most accomplished work to date [Wendy and Lucy, 2008]. A fitting dedication, for in this film the surest connections are either enabled by animals or are between humans and animals: the horse which holds Jamie and Beth, the birds outside Albert’s home, Laura’s dog on the sofa.

— Amelie Hastie (Film Quarterly)