She’s the movie’s least familiar face, but Lily Gladstone is the breakout star in this drama about four women in small town Montana.

A hipster love triangle with major script problems is nearly redeemed by Michelle WIlliams’ moving performance.

Loosely based around the true story of a fur trapper-turned-Oregon Trail guide who led a group of settlers on an ill-advised short cut, Kelly Reichardt’s latest is not just the strongest work of her career, but one of the best films you’re likely to see all year, a quiet, meditative masterpiece that examines the cultural and gender norms of the United States in the 19th century within the context of a life-or-death struggle for survival.

Early in their courtship, Dean (Ryan Gosling) serenades Cindy (Michelle Williams) on a city street, late at night, with the pop standard, “You Only Hurt the One You Love”. By the time we see this moment, in flashback, it’s already quite clear that in the present, they’re making good on that song’s title. But something else interesting is going on beneath the surface of the youthful romantic exuberance of the scene.

Director Kelly Reichardt’s fourth feature, Wendy and Lucy, is a quiet affair. It takes place over the course of a couple of days in a little Oregon town. Its protagonist, Wendy, doesn’t say much, as she spends most of her time alone, and occupies nearly every frame of the movie. And the film lacks a musical score of any sort, apart from a simple little offhand tune that Wendy hums absently to herself (written…