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As bracing as a Chinook blowing down from the Rockies, writer-director Kelly Reichardt's "Certain Women" is a clear-eyed look at three women quietly dealing with problems and disappointments in Montana.

The three tales Reichardt tells, adapted from a collection of short stories by Montana-born writer Maile Meloy, follow different women in and around Livingston, Mont. The movie won't please the Livingston Chamber of Commerce, as it depicts the town as cold, a little desolate and rather rundown.

The three women are:

• Laura (played by Laura Dern), a lawyer who has difficulty convincing her client, Mr. Fuller (Jared Harris), that he's got no case for an on-the-job injury. Later, Laura is called in when Fuller takes the law, and a shotgun, into his own hands.

• Gina (Michelle Williams), who is camped out with her husband, Ryan (James LeGros), and their teen daughter, Guthrie (Sara Rodier), at the site of the dream house the couple intend to build. Gina and Ryan visit an elderly neighbor, Albert (Rene Auberjonois), who has some sandstone on his property the couple want to buy — but the negotiations are tricky.

• Jamie (Lily Gladstone), a tomboyish young woman who works alone maintaining the horses at a ranch about four hours' drive from Livingston. Bored, she sits in on a community law class and becomes smitten with the teacher, Beth (Kristen Stewart), a newly minted lawyer from Livingston.

The three stories are tenuously linked narratively — in the very first scene, for example, Laura and Ryan are shown having an affair — but strongly connected by their moods. These women have their desires and are silently suffering as their lives fall short of satisfying those desires on the chilly leeward side of the Rockies.

These are chapters of lives in progress, and Reichardt ("Meek's Cutoff," "Night Moves") homes in on the small details, from Laura's half-untucked sweater to the way Jamie brushes a horse, to capture her characters. She never lets these women dwell on their struggles, but captures them in the heroic act of living their lives.

The actors carry much of this weight, and do so brilliantly. Dern, Williams and Stewart are known quantities, and their performances are unassumingly brilliant. That a relative newcomer like Gladstone (raised on the Blackfeet Reservation, about 250 miles northwest of Livingston) can go toe-to-toe with Stewart in every scene and break the viewer's heart is a small gift, just one of many this gently observational movie delivers.

Twitter: @moviecricket —

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'Certain Women'

Three quietly moving short stories of women tempered by life in small-town Montana.

Where • Broadway Centre Cinemas.

When • Opens Friday, Oct. 28.

Rating • R for some language.

Running time • 107 minutes.