Film

Certain Women

Kelly Reichardt weaves three loosely linked short stories into a hushed portrait of women navigating quiet disappointment across the American Northwest. Adapted from Maile Meloy's fiction, it trades plot for atmosphere — long silences, weather, the ache of being unseen. Ideal for anyone who loves slow, literary cinema and actors doing more with less; hard going for anyone wanting momentum or resolution.

TMDb rating6.0

If you liked this

Wendy and Lucy2008

Same director, same star in Michelle Williams, same unhurried empathy for someone quietly falling through the cracks of America. If Certain Women's stillness worked on you, this is the purest dose.

But Even shorter and starker, with almost no plot at all — if you found Certain Women slow, this will feel unbearably so.

Wendy and Lucy poster

Meek's Cutoff2011

Reichardt again, stretched into a tense pioneer western where the same patient camera watches women assert quiet authority against male stubbornness on the open plain.

But The historical setting and deliberate pace make it an even bigger commitment, and its open ending frustrates plenty of viewers.

Meek's Cutoff poster

Winter's Bone2010

Swap Montana ranches for the Ozarks and you get a fierce, unshowy heroine holding a fractured family together through sheer will and silence.

But Grimmer and more dangerous than anything in Certain Women — this is survival, not quiet dissatisfaction.

Winter's Bone poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

3 Women1977

Both films use exactly three women as separate, loosely joined case studies to ask what a life amounts to in isolation — Altman just answers it through psychedelia instead of restraint.

Robert Altman's hallucinatory triptych follows three women whose identities blur in a desert town — the same structural gamble of three interwoven female stories, decades before Reichardt tried it.

But Surreal, dreamlike, and disorienting on purpose; anyone wanting Certain Women's realism will find this a strange, druggy cousin.

3 Women poster
More like this (8)

Nomadland2021

Another meditative journey through the American West, following a woman who has quietly slipped outside conventional life, told with the same patient, observational tenderness.

But More overtly elegiac and awards-friendly; if you wanted Certain Women's ambiguity, this can feel a touch more sentimental.

Nomadland poster

The Rider2018

Real ranch hands play versions of themselves, shot with the same tender attention to landscape and physical labour as Lily Gladstone's storyline — a companion piece in mood.

But Very little dialogue and an even slower burn; it asks for real patience with silence and horses.

The Rider poster

Leave No Trace2018

Debra Granik's quiet study of a father and daughter surviving off-grid shares Certain Women's trust in stillness, landscape, and unspoken emotional weather.

But Centres a parent-child bond rather than the loneliness between women, so the emotional register is a little different.

Leave No Trace poster

Nebraska2013

Alexander Payne's monochrome road trip through the Midwest carries the same dry, deadpan tenderness for ordinary disappointment and the landscapes that hold it.

But More comic and more male-centred; the humour softens the melancholy Certain Women leaves raw.

Nebraska poster

Frozen River2008

Two women, one desperate, forge an uneasy alliance across a wintry border town — the same unglamorous economic anxiety and quiet female resolve.

But Plottier and more thriller-adjacent than Reichardt's stillness, more interested in consequence than ambiguity.

Frozen River poster

Fish Tank2009

Andrea Arnold's rough, tender character study of a girl aching for connection shares Certain Women's trust in silence and unglamorous longing.

But Younger protagonist, British council estate setting, and a rawer, angrier energy than the film's restraint.

Fish Tank poster

Godless2017

It takes Certain Women's central question — what happens when women quietly run things the men have abandoned — and answers it as full-blooded genre television instead of hushed short fiction.

A Netflix miniseries where a frontier town is run almost entirely by women after the men die in a mining accident — the same quiet authority and landscape, given seven hours and gunfights.

But Broader, more plot-driven, and unashamedly a Western with violence and incident — the opposite of Reichardt's minimalism.

Godless poster

The Witch2016

Same patient, weather-beaten American wilderness and the same interest in a woman's interior isolation — Eggers just lets the loneliness curdle into terror instead of melancholy.

Robert Eggers' slow-burn colonial horror strands a family in isolated wilderness and lets dread build entirely through atmosphere, silence, and a young woman's mounting unease.

But It is a horror film with real menace and an unsettling final act — a much darker, more frightening register than anything in Certain Women.

The Witch poster

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Nomadland, Wendy and Lucy, Paterson, Columbus, First Cow, The Lost Daughter