[yasr_overall_rating]
The lives of three women intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail.
Montana seems to be the perfect setting for this trio of unfinished business/life propositions. Writer/director Kelly Reichardt over the sprawling hillside, develops long and winding roads as seemingly the perfect metaphor for twists and turns in lives that are greatly impactful, but basically lead to nowhere fast. The cast, which includes three very prominent actresses who are strong-willed women caught in the throes of life, fills us with hope and humility while leading us through various stages of personal and civil unrest.
Kristen Stewart, who plays Beth Travis, is an attorney just starting out and in order to get experience, she alienates herself and accepts employment four hours away as a teacher who is totally unfamiliar with her subject matter, but is smart enough to make a lasting impression on one of her students. Her most impressionable student, Jamie (Lily Gladstone), who is a Ranch Hand, falls head over heels in love with her and reacts to being totally forsaken when Beth quits teaching without notice and doesn’t show up for class.
Michelle Williams, who plays Gina Lewis, is an outdoors nature woman who seems to have gotten blindsided by her inability to focus on nothing in life other than to build the house of her dreams on a foundation of non-inclusiveness. In a volatile marriage, she tries to include her husband and daughter who seem to have formed an emotional alliance to each other and against her with a physical barrier towards any activity she chooses that would lend towards developing into a cohesive unit. Laura Dern, who plays Laura Wells, seems to be painfully misguided and confused by who or what makes her happy. Torn between how to fix what isn’t wrong and how to avoid what is right, she toggles between the men in her life, trying to find a cure for what doesn’t ail her.
While each of these women suffer through necessary relationships in order to define who they really are, there is mounting enthusiasm amongst the audience, that each will develop into something great and the journey to understand them better will be worth it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen and in the end, it just feels like there is a lot of investment of time, talent and energy with little or no return on the puzzling pieces of well-told beginnings without proper endings.
Opens at the Angelika Film Centers in Dallas & Plano Friday, October 28th
