Review of Certain Women, directed by Kelly Reichardt

Around the time that Lily Gladstone began collecting her accolades for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon, MUBI began to put up features on their home screen about the movies she had been in.

They’d compiled the movies they had on the system with her in it, and I was staring at it for about a week before I began to crack.

What had finally convinced me to watch one of the movies was the fact I ended up watching Frybread Face and Me on Netflix, which had me in love with the simplicity of the story.

My first semester of graduate school I had a great honor of taking a Native history course through the prism of decolonization, which had made me more interested in indigenous stories and people.

While this isn’t specifically a Native story, I want to support Native creatives whenever possible, so I decided to watch it. And I’m glad I did!

Let’s get into the review.

The story of three different women in Montana, with the law field connecting them.

We begin this movie with Laura Wells (played by Laura Derns), a Montana-based attorney dealing with a difficult client at the beginning of the movie. He had a workplace injury that left him disabled, and when he doesn’t listen to anything she has to say, she takes him to another lawyer. However, he can no longer sue because he took the company’s settlement.

He confesses something concerning to Laura after his wife kicks him out of their car: he wants to take down his former employer violently, with a gun. Laura goes home, but then gets a call in the middle of the night: he actually did what he said he was going to do. He’s holding a security guard hostage, and she decides to take matters into her own hands.

Laura goes and talks to him, but then when she finds out where he is, she tells the cops where he is. He is arrested. We then move into the next story, where a married couple, Gina and Ryan, live in their home they built.

Gina has some resent against her husband, as she thinks he undermines her, and, as it turns out, he has an affair with Laura. On the way home from a camping trip, Gina is disturbed when the elderly man, whose home the have stopped at, ignores her.

She wants to buy sandstone from him, but when he agrees, Gina complains in the car that Ryan didn’t do anything to support her. When they come up to pick the goods, the she waves at him, waves, but he just kind of stares at her instead of waving back.

We then meet our third character: Jamie. She works on a ranch, and during the winter she’s pretty much by herself throughout her daily life. When she drives into town, she sees a bunch of cars going into a school, and she follows. There, she meets a law class led by Beth Travis.

Jamie stays for the class, and then ends up going to eat at a diner with Beth after the class. Beth tells her that she actually lives four hours away, and she comes into town just to teach. She does this twice a week to give these people the opportunity to learn about education law.

Yet, having no interest in this to begin with, Jamie continues going to the class. One day she brings a horse, and Beth and she have fun riding the horse. But the next week, Beth quits, and Jamie drives the four hours to go find Beth. She goes to every single law office until she finds Beth.

She tells Beth she would have never seen her again if she didn’t come, but leaves heartbroken when Beth doesn’t respond to what she has to say. At the same time, Laura goes to visit her client, and he tells her he understands what he did.

Gina is finally appreciated by her husband because she did work with the sandstone, and Jamie continues working at the ranch without Beth in her life.

Overall Thoughts

I was really pleasantly surprised by this movie. I’d seen one of Reichardt’s other movies before at the New York Film Festival (Showing Up), and I think I’m really getting into the groove of her movies. They’re very female forward, and while they’re kind of quiet, I enjoy that fact.

What I enjoyed the most about this movie is that each of the female main characters were able to hold their own. The only story where a woman shoots for her husband’s approval is Gina’s, but I’m not mad at her story. She wants to be appreciated for what she did, which is what so many wives should be acknowledged for.

The acting was also really good in this film as well. Each of these actors bring a master class in acting for a lot of their performances, and this movie is no exception. I’m glad I watched it at the end of the day, although I’m not sure if I’d rewatch it any time soon.

Go watch it if you haven’t already!

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