Reseñas de la crítica

Reichardt weaves a rich tapestry in sights and sounds. Be it overlapping conversations, pauses, and silences, butch men breaking into fights over nothing at local pubs, or a resentful traveller routinely refused the pleasures of biting into Cookie's delicious cakes, nothing escapes the director’s observant gaze.

Her [Reichardt's] latest film, First Cow, is a hushed, intimate, heartbreaking story about nothing less than the birth of modern America.

Rather than the widescreen vistas that have come to define America on screen, Reichardt and Blauvelt once again find piercing beauty in more personal framings, wherein human features are at times almost indistinguishable from the interlacing fronds of shadowy foliage – characters passing through the half-light of history.

The film feels uncanny in its realism, from the dark of rural night on down. The same goes for the threat of violence - casual, brutal, everywhere... If First Cow has a flaw, it is that so much of it is so gossamer-subtle, it clangs when it isn't... But what it does right, it does wonderfully.

Reichardt, also the co-writer, delivers a patient and earnest parable about environmentalism, American destiny and the value of friendship.

It's an exquisitely-acted, heart-warming meditation on camaraderie, as well as a hugely evocative portrayal of the hardships of frontier life, among people who really were the astronauts of their day, boldly going where no one had gone before.

This is a bold, perceptive portrait of early America that deserves to be held up as a new standard of historical filmmaking. Unlike so much work set in the period, it’s firmly rooted in ideas of colonisation and oppression. Reichardt has done much to battle the cultural myth that there was ever a west to be tamed or to be won, since it was always home to its indigenous people.

Reichardt’s approach has the authenticity and calibre of such revisionist westerns as Altman’s McCabe and Mrs Miller, Jarmusch’s Dead Man (whose Gary Farmer is amongst her supporting cast), and HBO’s landmark series Deadwood. At the same time, the delightful depiction of characters bringing tasty treats to a gobsmacked clientele merits a place amongst the great foodie films – Babette’s Feast, Tampopo, Big Night.

U S director Kelly Reichardt already has a cult following but if there’s any justice her latest offering will be a smash hit. A Western, First Cow is sensual, bleak and meticulously authentic, reminiscent of McCabe & Mrs Miller, as well as Barry Lyndon. It also has one of the best soundtracks of the year (William Tyler’s spacey electric guitar, on An Opening will basically stroke your heart to smithereens).

It's of a piece with her other films about economic marginalisation and stray social kindness in the isolated Pacific Northwest, but with its own buttery warmth: the queer undertones of Cookie and King-Lu's relationship, neither coyly concealed nor tidily named, lend complex human dimensions to tacit political commentary.

Evie [the titular cow] is, thankfully, as convincing as she is beautiful, and this is a convincing and beautiful film. It is touching, tender, original, entrancing, definitely the best cow film of the year. Plus it’s also a quietly masterful thriller where a clafoutis (blueberry) will have you on the edge of your seat.

Filmed with a compassionate eye and in an intimate, boxy aspect ratio – the antithesis of the widescreen, dusty vistas of the classic western – Reichardt asks us to look beyond historical myth-making.