Certain Women · reception & legacy

2016 · Kelly Reichardt

How Certain Women has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Released quietly by IFC in 2016 to strong reviews but a tiny box office and a fair share of 'nothing happens' shrugs, it's since climbed steadily — Lily Gladstone's post–Killers of the Flower Moon stardom sent a wave of viewers back to it, and it's now routinely called one of Reichardt's best.

What's debated

The perennial split: is its quietness profound or inert — and does the Gladstone–Stewart third story so outshine the other two that people wish it were the whole film?

Its footprint

The horseback ride — Gladstone ferrying Kristen Stewart to the diner — has become a shorthand image for cinematic yearning, endlessly gif'd and invoked in Letterboxd reviews about longing.

Where it stands

A slow-cinema touchstone and Letterboxd 'yearning' favourite, now a fixture in Reichardt's canon and the standard answer to 'where do I start with Lily Gladstone?'

★ Did you know? In Maile Meloy's source story 'Travis, B.', the lovestruck ranch hand is a man — Reichardt rewrote the character as a woman, and cast the then little-known Lily Gladstone in what became her breakout role; the film also won Best Film at the 2016 BFI London Film Festival.