Certain Women **** (2016, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, Lily Gladstone, Jared Harris, James Le Gros, Rene Auberjonois) – Movie Review

Writer-director Kelly Reichardt hauntingly brings some of Maile Meloy’s stories to the screen in three inter-connected yarns in which the lives of four women intersect in the small-town America on Montana. It stars Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern and Lily Gladstone.

There are men in the film too, played, very well, by Jared Harris, James Le Gros and Rene Auberjonois, but this film is called Certain Women, and the focus is entirely on those characters and the actresses playing them, and playing them like folk who have found an oasis in a desert for actresses.

All four stars are excellent. Dern is particularly good, then Stewart, then Gladstone and then Williams, but all good. All the actors are slightly stretched, working above their regular average level, raising their game for Reichardt and Meloy’s material.

Dern plays a lawyer, Laura, who tries to defuse a hostage situation and calm her client, Fuller (Harris). Williams and Le Gros play a married couple, Gina and Ryan, who try to persuade an elderly man, Albert (Rene Auberjonois), to sell his stockpile of sandstone for their new home, and Stewart plays a young lawyer, Elizabeth Travis, who finds herself a ranch hand groupie, The Rancher (Gladstone), while teaching a twice-weekly adult education class four hours’ drive from home.

It says a lot that each short story is satisfying in itself, and the movie ultra-satisfying as a coherent whole. Dern brings a lot of warmth and humour to her part of the film, which helps the overall tone, which is generally kind of the warm side of bitter-sweet.

It is a fine, really striking looking film. The filming in Montana is glorious, thanks to sharp-eyed cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt. Location shooting took place at Livingston, Montana, and Shields Valley High School, Clyde Park, Montana.

Williams previously starred in Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008) and Meek’s Cutoff (2010). Le Gros previously co-starred in Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013).

Meloy’s three source short stories, Travis B, Native Sandstone and Tome, are included in her collections Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It and Half in Love.

The film is dedicated to Reichardt’s dog Lucy, star of her Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy.

René Auberjonois died of lung cancer on 8 December 2019, aged 79.

R.I.P. Rene Auberjonois (1940 – 2019). His long and distinguished career includes Father John Mulcahy in MASH (1970) and Albert in Certain Women (2016).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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