“Most people don't know how they're gonna feel from one moment to the next. But a dope fiend has a pretty good idea. All you gotta do is look at the labels on the little bottles.”
Blackout (2023)
Date de sortie : Post-production
Réalisateur : Larry Fessenden
Scénario : Larry Fessenden
Avec : Addison Timlin, James Le Gros, Kevin Corrigan
Certain Women (2016, dir. Kelly Reichardt) - review by Rookie-Critic
Certain Women was certainly moving. It tells 3 barely connected stories of four different women who, keeping in true Reichardt tradition, are stuck. Although this time it can be viewed as more of a societal stagnation than an emotional or literal one. The sexism heaped upon our 4 leads by both male and female side characters is both overt and maddeningly unopposed, but also portrayed as almost a mundanity in the lives of our protagonists. Something that is an unalienable fact to be brushed off and moved past, a battle to be chosen to fight or not to fight with each new case. Something to be passively mentioned with a small hope of acknowledgement from someone, anyone else in the room. It's again an optimistically melancholic film, with each story having a subtly different outcome: one slightly happy, one slightly sad, and one truly neutral.
With every new film of Reichardt's I watch, I grow more and more impressed with her ability to use silence as a powerful storytelling and emotional tool. Characters have whole conversations, entire thematic and personal landscapes are painted just by two characters sharing a look, or not sharing a look, or starting to say something, then choosing not to. This is a movie that is incredibly sparse on dialogue, but there is never a second that you don't know how our four protagonists feel. Reichardt's characters feel so real that they could very well just be sitting next to you, watching these stories unfold and unraveling them right there with you. It is an anthology film, and by nature it falls victim to some segments being much better than others, but I think all three of these stories sell different aspects of the film's overall message to great effect, and the individual segments' lacking pieces don't have a detrimental effect to the film as a whole. If you can dig past the surface-level mundanity, this is an incredibly strong film about the everyday ins-and-outs of the female experience from a litany of angles, all just as valid as the others, and well worth the 1 hour and 45 minute runtime.
Score: 9/10
Currently available for streaming on PlutoTV and The Criterion Channel.
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