Tag: 2020 Reviews

Review: Crazy Samurai Musashi

As one of the more prominent figures in Japanese culture, infamous swordsman and philosopher Miyamoto Musashi has seen his share of screen time. From the earliest days of cinema through to outings by Daisuke Ito and Kenji Mizoguchi, the legendary warrior was perhaps most famously portrayed by Toshiro Mifune in Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy.

So, director Yûji Shimomura’s samurai epic comes with the weight of history and expectation. CRAZY SAMURAI MUSASHI (狂武蔵) depicts one of his most famous battles, as we watch him take on a veritable battalion of 588 warriors and cut them down one-by-one. Shimomura’s stylistic spin is to do it all in single scene, no-cut action sequence.

At barely 90 minutes, the film is significantly shorter than the 10-hour epics that have gone before. The film kicks into high gear about seven minutes into proceedings with a dramatic title drop and, backed by Hidehiro Kawaii’s thumping score, barely lets up from there. From this point on, Musashi (portrayed here by Tak Sakaguchi, reteaming with Re:Born helmer Shimomura) fights his way through a sea of would-be assassins.

Curiously, this comes with a script from avant-garde maestro Sion Sono, although save for the excessive amount of bloodletting, you wouldn’t necessarily feel his fingerprints on the material. Still, this seems to be primarily an exercise in action choreography, a field that Shimomura is primarily known for. Indeed, once the action gets going there isn’t a single line of dialogue for close to 10 minutes.

The decision to shoot this as one long action sequence ensures constant momentum. Once we’re in the thick of it, the camera rarely leaves Sakaguchi’s side. There are a few breaks given to the lead, of course, and one sidebar fight adds some much-needed levity to the melee. It’s almost structured like a video game, complete with mini-bosses and cut-scenes for respite. At the apex, an exhausted and rain drenched Sakaguchi is swinging two swords and still taking on groups of opponents.

Yet the overall effect is a little bit numbing as well. After the novelty of the lengthy fight sequences has worn off, one starts to get distracted by any detail onscreen. After all, there’s only so much digital bloodletting one can watch before noticing that all the extras are laboriously falling or crawling off camera so Shimomura can keep rolling. Still, this is an ambitious exercise and perhaps it’s best viewed as a big, bloody, arty experiment.

In a coda to the film, one that flashes forward in time to a different moment in the Mushashi legend, Shimomura reverts to a more traditional multi-shot sequence. In some ways, it would have been interesting to see an entire film in this style, as it’s a jolt to the senses after almost an hour of fighting. Nevertheless, this is unquestionably bound for cult classic status.

CRAZY SAMURAI MUSASHI is playing at Fantasia 2020.

2020 | Japan| DIRECTOR: Yûji Shimomura | WRITER: Sion Sono | CAST: Tak Sakaguchi, Kento Yamazaki | DISTRIBUTOR: Fantasia Festival 2020 (Canada) | RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 20 August-2 September 2020 (MIFF)

Read more coverage of Japanese cinema from the silent era to festivals and other contemporary releases. Plus go beyond Japan with more film from Asia in Focus.

August 20, 2020
Review: Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky

This year has thrown up a lot of trauma, and the 250th anniversary of Captain Jame Cook’s arrival in Australia has been one of the more divisive. His crew spent only eight days in the land the traditional owners called Kamay, modern day Botany Bay, an event that continues to be both celebrated and contested.

Director Steven McGregor and performer/poet Steven Oliver take the opportunity to ask, “In 2020, does Australia have a blurred vision” of it’s own history? After all, it seems that any attempt to reframe colonial narratives from the perspective of Australia’s First Peoples is met with aggression from certain conservative quarters.

Oliver explains that what he’s attempting to do with this film is collaborating with Indigenous artists and musicians craft a new songline for 21st century Australia. “Songlines,” he argues, “should be a part of Aboriginal history as they’re taught in schools.” It’s a way of shifting away from textbook perspectives of Cook the Explorer as the nation’s official creation myth. Hip hop artist Daniel Rankine (aka Trials) is more blunt: “You can’t punch me in the face and tell me it doesn’t hurt.”

McGregor and Oliver’s documentary follows the tradition of artists like Daniel Boyd, whose painting We Call Them Pirates Out Here (2006) also parodies ‘official’ history by remixing the 1902 painting by Emanuel Phillip Fox. (Source: MCA).

Oliver and McGregor aren’t the first to re-examine Australia’s relationship with its own history. A few years ago, Warrick Thornton took a cheeky look at how symbols can be twisted by colonial powers in We Don’t Need a Map. With Oliver as host, LOOKY LOOKY HERE COMES COOKY follows a similarly irreverent, but no less thought provoking,

In Oliver’s inimitable, code-switching style – familiar to audiences from television’s Faboriginal and Black Comedy – he (literally) shimmies across the continent speaking with artists and musicians like Rankine, Kev Carmody, Fred Leone and Alice Skye. At times it feels like the making-of documentary of a music video, but that’s kind of the point. In fact, that’s exactly what this is, including Oliver’s unique performance art that incorporates statistics.

“They lock us in the room with this thing called Australia.”

While running for less than an hour, McGregor and Oliver pack a lot of content into their documentary. At one point, Oliver visits a Captain Cook Hotel, and eats a Cook burger, to explore the obsession with naming things after a British sea captain. As one person from Cooktown adds, “We’re all Cooked out up here.”

Through this he points out the cultural differences between propping up the dead and letting them go. It also demonstrates how key figures and events, such as Multuggerah and the Battle of One Tree Hill, have been largely forgotten in texts. Like Thornton’s film, cut-out animation (think a more sophisticated Monty Python) is also used to concisely summarise moments in history, refuting the idea that the land was empty or just given up at the moment of colonisation.

In a Q&A that accompanied the MIFF screening, McGregor explained that there was another round of shooting that was meant to take place in the Torres Strait Island but was interrupted by COVID pandemic restrictions. While some of these setbacks are evident in the short runtime, it will hopefully leave viewers with lots of food for thought. “Are you part of the country’s problem,” Oliver seems to conclude, “or the solution?”

2020 | Australia | DIRECTOR: Steven McGregor | WRITER: Danielle MacLean, Steven McGregor, Steven Oliver | CAST: Steven Oliver, Daniel Rankine (Trials), Nathan Bird (Birdz), Fred Leone, Mo’Ju, Alice Skye, Kev Carmody, Paul Carmody, Mau Power | DISTRIBUTOR: MIFF 2020 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 52 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6-23 August 2020 (MIFF)

August 18, 2020
Review: Wet Season

Anthony Chen’s second feature may be called WET SEASON (热带雨), but in weather terms its more like the seasonal build-up. Filled with slow-burning tension, one where you always feel like you’re on the cusp of something, it almost never catches fire. After all, embers get notoriously damp in the rain.

The Singaporean drama is, at its core, a coming of age drama about the relationship between school teacher Ling (Yeo Yann Yann) and secondary student Kok Wei Lun (Koh Jia Ler). While there is an inevitability to their interactions, Chen’s understated film is all about character, mood and setting.

That setting, as the title would imply, is a frequently rain-soaked one. This leads to an incredibly claustrophobic feeling in the first half of the film. Ling’s drives back and forth between work and home are often filled with her anixety as glimpsed through a raindrop streaked windshield. Her tense relationship with her husband Andrew (Christopher Lee) is built around their struggles to conceive a child. She’s also taken on the burden of caring for her bed-ridden father-in-law.

While there’s a pervading feeling that we know exactly how this is all going to turn out, it’s to Chen’s credit that the film doesn’t go there as rapidly as one would expect. Chen’s pacing is so measured that the film appears to be an aimless series of transitions at times. When the dam bursts, in a scene that’s appropriately uncomfortable to watch, it feels more like a sad inevitability than anything titillating or climactic.

What makes WET SEASON worth sticking around for is the Golden Horse Award-winning performance of Yeo Yann Yann. She’s difficult to read at first, and we ponder whether her closeness to the boy is one of misplaced maternalism or something else. Yet as Wei Lun becomes more irrational, possessive and inappropriate, we see a strength emerging in Ling that becomes the backbone of the film.

The bittersweet ending is almost a step too far, even if it does finally leave Ling in a place of empowerment. Here we come to the realisation that the film has not strictly been about a teacher-student relationship at all, and that the coming-of-age aspects are more about one’s late 30s than late teens. One suspects that this perspective would add a great deal to a second viewing, although Chen asks a fair bit of us for this minor payoff.

2019 | Singapore | DIRECTOR: Anthony Chen | WRITER: Anthony Chen | CAST: Yeo Yann Yann, Koh Jia Ler, Christopher Lee | DISTRIBUTOR: MIFF 2020 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6-23 August 2020 (MIFF)

Read more coverage of Singaporean cinema from the silent era to festivals and other contemporary releases. Plus go beyond Singapore with more film from Asia in Focus.

August 17, 2020
Review: Black Bear

Things are not what they seem in this Sundance-premiering film from director Lawrence Michael Levine. Here he taps into the inherent tension that sits within all closed systems of coupledom. It’s almost like he wanted to lob a grenade into the mix to see what would happen. The fragments of shrapnel take us in some unexpected directions.

In a remote mountain cabin, couple Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and Blair (Sarah Gadon) host filmmaker Allison (Aubrey Plaza) while she attempts to fuel her creative process. Allison’s presence rapidly fuels the existing friction between the couple, who are already anxious while expecting their first child. Jealousy and conflicting ideals come to the surface as the pressure builds to breaking point.

It becomes difficult to talk about any further developments without dipping into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say that Levine’s screenplay offers viewers an alternative perspective on events, using thematic repetition and the conventions of the three-act structure to mess with us. Held together by a recurring image of Allison in a red bathing suit on a pier, the lines between autobiography and character creation get incredibly blurred as the film progresses.

“It’s so rare I get a chance to pick a real artist’s brain.”

My immediate reaction to this film was ‘mumblecore Mulholland Drive’ but at least one other reviewer beat me to that quip, and I can’t use it in a review. So, I won’t. Instead it’s worth considering this film on its own merits, as a collection of possibly abstract scenes where character and mood are of paramount importance.

It’s one of the better aspects that Levine has borrowed from David Lynch here, casting Plaza in what is arguably one of the best performances of her career to date. Effectively playing multiple characters, or at least multiple aspects of the same self, we’ve never seen Plaza this raw. Quite literally laying herself bare in some scenes, the typically deadpan actor swings between subtle manipulation to anguished cries at the drop of a hat. It’s mesmerising to watch unfold.

Robert Leitzell’s photography is both deliberate and delicate. At times it captures the claustrophobia of the intimate three-way relationship at the core of the story, while at other times it’s the crisp vastness of the lake surrounding the house. Giulio Carmassi and Bryan Scary’s makes itself a little too present in the early stages of the film. Indeed, the early scenes of light banter are unnerving thanks to a very sinister set of scales following the main characters around.

In a film that uses repetition and recurring motifs as a narrative device, Levine may be fully aware that we’ve seen this film before somewhere. It’s a hard feeling to shake by the time the credits roll, but the sense of mystery and fine performances manage to sustain momentum for most of the running time.

2020 | US | DIRECTOR: Lawrence Michael Levine | WRITER: Lawrence Michael Levine | CAST: Aubrey Plaza, Sarah Gadon, Christopher Abbott | DISTRIBUTOR: MIFF 2020 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6 – 23 August 2020 (MIFF)

August 13, 2020
Review: Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

The light seeping in through a briefly opened door is one of the few glimpses we get of the outside world once we enter the Roaring 20s, a dive bar held together by an eclectic mix of regulars.

Ushered inside by documentarians Bill and Turner Ross, we meet the establishment on its closing night. Sitting on the fringes of Las Vegas, far from the bright lights of the Strip, the regulars have gathered for one last hurrah to their drinking hole.

Save for some editing and the odd title card, the Ross brothers barely impose any narrative voice on the events. The effect is appropriately intoxicating. Immersing the viewer in a series of freewheeling conversations and overlapping dialogue, it’s like a beer-soaked Robert Altman film that’s been running continuously since the 70s.

It might sound like a claustrophobic nightmare, but what emerges from the red-lit world is a kind of hypnotic beauty. As the patrons get drunker, the barstool wisdom flows as freely as the liquor. We have no sense of how or why this group of people found the bar, only that they are here. “When nobody else don’t want your ass,” muses one patron, “you can come in here and have a good time.” Sometimes you gotta go where everybody knows your name.

Then the strangest thing happens. While the film remains ostensibly directionless and adrift, we start to become inebriated by the aimlessness. Cutaways to snippets on the TV become surreal vignettes, as if we’re viewing the world through beer goggles. Outsiders wander in, and we occasionally see youths outside smoking, but they now seem as strange as the barflies did at the start of the film.

“Get out of this bar while you’re still a musician and don’t go into another one.”

Without judgment or commentary, the filmmakers elicit empathy for these humans of the bar. There’s a particularly heartbreaking moment towards the end when one patron, who has been urging anybody who will listen to not follow his footsteps, wakes up to find he’s missed seeing everyone off. Having borne witness to the whole night, one might feel a wee bit guilty for not reaching out to wake him up.

“There is nothing more boring than a guy who used to do stuff,” croaks one barfly, “and he don’t do stuff no more because he’s in a bar.” Yet despite the love their camera shows these men, the brothers Ross seem to have already contradicted him. We have shared a small but significant part of their lives, but we may never know what becomes of them once the sun comes up. They don’t have to go home, but they can’t stay here.

2020 | US | DIRECTORS: Bill Ross, Turner Ross | CAST: Peter Elwell, Michael Martin, Shay Walker | DISTRIBUTOR: MIFF 2020 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 98 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6 – 23 August 2020 (MIFF)

August 11, 2020
Review: Suk Suk

LGBTQI+ rights have come a long way in Hong Kong over the last few decades. As recently as last year, the Yeung Chu Wing v Secretary for Justice case finally conceded that laws specifically targeting gay men are incompatible with the Basic Law.

Yet there is still a long way to go, with recognition of rights for same-sex couples, marriage equality and public housing rights still in contention. With SUK SUK (叔．叔), known as Twilight’s Kiss in some markets, director Ray Yeung explores the underlying discrimination from a perspective that’s been largely unexplored in Hong Kong cinema: the intersection of ageism and homophobia.

Of course, LGBTQI+ representation has been historically slim in Hong Kong cinema. Even as one of the longest-running programmers as Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (HKLGFF), Yeung conceded in a recent interview that there’s “really only a handful of LGBT movies locally. Happy Together (1997), He’s a Woman, She’s a Man (1994), Sisterhood (2016) and the work of filmmaker Scud (Utopia) are notable exceptions, of course.

In Yeung’s latest film, Pak (Tai Bo), an aged taxi driver who refuses to retire, meets Hoi (Ben Yuen), a retired divorcee and single father, in a park. Both men are closeted, having hidden their homosexuality for decades. Over the course of the film, Yeung studies them as they explore a kind of intimacy previously denied to them.

Relying largely on the central performances of Tai Bo (who won at the HKFCS Awards) and Ben Yuen (nominated for a Golden Horse), Yeung’s gentle pacing and often austere approach to the material sometimes keeps us at arm’s length. It’s worth noting that neither of the leads are themselves gay, although also tackling representation in performance may have been too big a bite for one small film.

In between tender montages set to music of Qing Shan, Yeung manages to fit in an undercurrent of activism as well. Groups of gay men sit around in saunas, clubs and restaurants discussing ways in which they’ve had to stay hidden to some extent. The issue of gay nursing homes becomes something of a sub-plot, culminating in testimony delivered by activists to a hearing. It might result in a bittersweet realisation for our leads, but it’s a point plainly made for audiences.

On some levels, Yeung’s film is more successful as a message delivery device than as a narrative piece. Yet for an industry where gay characters have frequently been used for comic effect or as the best friend in a rom-com, SUK SUK represents something of a quantum leap for Hong Kong cinema.

2019 | Hong Kong | DIRECTOR: Ray Yeung | WRITER: Ray Yeung | CAST: Tai Bo, Ben Yuen, Patra Au | DISTRIBUTOR: MIFF 2020 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 92 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6-23 August 2020 (MIFF)

Read more coverage of Hong Kong cinema from the silent era to festivals and other contemporary releases. Plus go beyond Hong Kong with more film from Asia in Focus.

August 10, 2020
Review: Hong Kong Moments

“The worst time for my line of work since SARS,” laments a taxi driver at the start of Zhou Bing’s documentary. One can’t help but wonder how he’s feeling about how the rest of 2020 turned out.

Which is the point of HONG KONG MOMENTS, a film that takes snapshots of seven Hongkongers from different walks of life on three specific days. It’s a fly-on-the-wall approach, following a pro-democracy protester, a shop owner, an EMT, two opposing politicians, a cop and the aforementioned cabbie.

While the current wave of protests have been sparked by the controversial extradition bill proposed by mainland China in 2019, they have exposed the tensions in the ‘one country, two systems’ approach that has been bubbling away since the handover in 1997. Zhou doesn’t spend any time explaining what the Umbrella Movement is, instead choosing to simply drop us in the moment while we watch what happens.

From an outsider’s perspective – even for those of us who have kept a watchful eye on events unfolding in Hong Kong – Zhou’s film is the first to attempt an objective view of events. Through some gorgeously realised drone shots and interstitial photography, Zhou’s camera quite literally floats above this world for a bird’s eye view of the protests and backlash. At other times, Zhou simply contrasts the street clashes with life going on at Hong Kong’s famous Jockey Club.

This objectivity comes with a danger of being too centrist. The tea shop owner is harassed for being pro-police, while a well-disguised protester emphasises his “be water” approach and the futility of violence against police. Similarly, only the briefest of mentions is given to the legacy of British colonial rule. Yet on the flip side, Zhou is careful to show the aftermath of the protests. These are not images of wanton destruction or violent anarchists, but of citizens being tear-gassed while others attempt to wash their eyes.

“In a few years time, will Hongkongers still be Hongkongers?”

The film ends with a title card indicating that it is ‘dedicated to all Hongkongers,’ perhaps the most overtly political statement that Zhou makes in the film. It reflects the attitudes of at least one subject, who maintains that the “people in power don’t care about the indigenity of Hong Kong.” Which might be the strongest case that Zhou makes here: regardless of the opposing political views, there is a unique Hong Kong culture distinct from the mainland, one that needs investment to be maintained.

At the time of writing this review, it’s only been a matter of hours since a joint statement by the Foreign Ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, and the United States Secretary of State was issued. It expresses “deep concern at Beijing’s imposition of the new National Security Law, which is eroding the Hong Kong people’s fundamental rights and liberties.” In light of this international call for “genuinely free, fair, and credible elections,” Zhou’s film takes on new meaning. It chronicles a moment in time, and only history will show us where that leads.

2020 | Hong Kong, Germany | DIRECTOR: Zhou Bing | WRITER: Zhou Bing | DISTRIBUTOR: MIFF 2020 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6-23 August 2020 (MIFF)

August 10, 2020
Review: The Killing of Two Lovers

The opening scene of Robert Machoian’s grabs viewers by the shirt collars immediately. The as-yet unnamed David (Clayne Crawford) stands over a sleeping couple with a gun in his hand.

The combination of the leading title and the precursor to violence might lead you to believe that you know exactly where this film is going. Yet what Machoian crafts here is actually a strangely powerful family film, one that takes a snapshot of a relationship under strain.

We rapidly learn that David is under a wee bit of strain. Recently separated from his wife Nikki (Sepideh Moafi), they are meant to be enjoying space while working out their issues. Despite an agreement they could see other people, and his desperation to be back with his wife and four kids, David’s violent temper and jealousy cause even more tension.

Machoian’s background as a documentarian is immediately evident. Through a series of intense long takes, under the steady and intimate photography of cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jiménez, we feel every single beat of David’s experience. Information is given out on a need-to-know basis, as if we are simply observers of a moment in time.

After that powerhouse opening, this quietly unassuming film always feels as though there’s a massive explosion just around the corner. When those eruptions do come – David confronting one of Nikki’s boyfriends, his temperamental relationship with his daughter, a mannequin he uses to unleash his aggressions – they serve as punctuations more than punctures. If nothing else, it suggests that even if David is successful in his quest, the problem may lie not in their separation but in himself.

Machoian doesn’t pretend that he has all the answers by the end of the film, leaving us on a kind of bittersweet note. The dam has finally broken, and it’s with resignation that the issues are resolved. Strangely, the moment of domestic shopping feels just as tense as the loaded gun in the opening shot.

2020 | US| DIRECTOR: Robert Machoian | WRITER: Robert Machoian | CAST: Clayne Crawford, Sepideh Moafi, Chris Coy, Avery Pizzuto, Arri Graham, Ezra Graham| DISTRIBUTOR: MIFF 2020 (AUS), Sorø Films (US), Pivot Pictures (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 85 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6-23 August 2020 (MIFF), 16 September 2021 (AUS)

August 9, 2020
Review: Peninsula

If ever there was a movie for the moment, it’s PENINSULA (반도). Yeon Sang-Ho’s film arrive on a wave of Korean zombie goodness, one started by his own prequel Train from Busan. It’s also the first Asian blockbuster to land in the middle of a global pandemic. It would be kind of ironic if irony hadn’t been cancelled for 2020.

The film opens with a brief prologue in which soldier Jung-Seok (Golden Slumber‘s Gang Dong-Won) escapes South Korea on an ill-fated boat. Four years later, he’s still awaiting refugee status in Hong Kong. So the crazy offer to go back to the Korean Peninsula with his brother-in-law Cheol-min (Kim Do-Yoon) to retrieve millions of dollars of US cash left in a truck is an appealing one.

It’s an old-fashioned zombie-heist, at least until things start to go wrong. Attacked by pseudo-militia Unit 631, led by Sergeant Hwang (Kim Min-jae) and Captain Seo (Koo Kyo-hwan), Cheol-min is captured and forced to compete in a zombie arena. Meanwhile, Jung-Seok is rescued by a duo of plucky fast-driving kids, and teams up with their mother Min-jung (Lee Jung-hyun) to plan escape.

This is not Yeon’s first return to his zombie world, with the animated film Seoul Station greatly expanding his universe. Yet in PENINSULA, Yeon levels up his scope having learned a few new tricks in his superhero flick Psychokinesis. Tonally different from the singular forward momentum of Train to Busan, it’s like Yeon Sang-ho’s zombieverse skipped over Dawn of the Dead and went straight to Land of the Dead.

In fact, there’s a few different tones going on in this sequel. Starting as a gangster film, it travels through the heist genre, a family drama and into the action of an apocalyptic wasteland. In Mad Max terms, it’s equal parts Fury Road and Beyond Thunderdome, complete with the benefits and excesses of both of those flicks. Some may argue that it could be a sequel to literally any of the countless zombie flicks out there, which is a fair argument in a film that’s really only sequel in name only.

Gang Dong-Won is a charismatic lead, capably driving the primary plot. However, it’s also fair to say that the moustache twirling Koo Kyo-hwan and matriarch Lee Jung-hyun head up their own subplot casts, which includes Lee Re (Innocent Witness) as a kick-ass baby driver. The latter is also instrumental as director Yeon thunders towards the fast-driving finale, an amazing series of stunt set-pieces where every bit of the US$16 million budget (roughly double Busan‘s cost) is seen on screen.

The Zombie Wave shows no signs of letting up across South Korea with 2020 blockbuster #Alive, period drama Kingdom and TCO’s upcoming Night of the Undead series taking bites out of audiences. In a year where box offices have taken a hit, PENINSULA is a welcome way to ease back into theatre life with a mix of something familiar and fresh. Just make sure you do it from a safe physical distance.

2020 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Yeon Sang-Ho | WRITER: Yeon Sang-Ho | CAST: Gang Dong-won, Lee Jung-hyun, Lee Re | DISTRIBUTOR: Magnum Films (AUS), New World Entertainment (Worldwide) | RUNNING TIME: 116 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 13 August 2020 (AUS)

August 9, 2020
Review: First Cow

If the duos that Kelly Reichardt develops onscreen are intriguing, it’s perhaps due to the collaborations she’s fostered offscreen. Will Oldham and Michelle Williams are so strongly tied to her earlier work, of course, but it’s Jonathan Raymond who has been a creative partner since Old Joy.

Partnership is such a central theme to Reichardt’s work, and FIRST COW is no exception. Based on the novel by Raymond, who also co-scripted Night Moves, the scene is set in the Oregon frontier in early 19^th century. Mind you, as present-day establishing scene with Alia Shawkat reminds us, Portland has maintained a timeless vibe for over a century. Even the beard lengths remain the same.

Otis “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro) is a chef whose quiet demeanour is at odds with the raucous fur trappers he’s travelling with. When he meets King-Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese immigrant seeking his fortune, the connection they form changes their fate. They begin working together on a successful cake venture, although it is reliant on stolen milk from the territory’s only cow, owned by the wealthy Chief Factor (Toby Jones).

Reichardt is no stranger to the period setting, having explored the role of women of that era in the brilliant Meek’s Cutoff. Reichardt and Raymond take the bromance and naturalism of Old Joy and combine it with the offbeat opportunities that cows inevitably provide.

In fact, FIRST COW acts as a kind of companion piece to Old Joy. Where that film was a quiet study of two men taking divergent paths at the crossroads of adulthood, here those paths join up in quietly unassuming ways. Cookie and King-Lu have lengthy existential conversations in the gentle embrace of their natural surroundings, much like their counterparts Kurt and Mark did 14 years earlier (or 186 years later if you prefer).

As with Meek’s Cutoff, Reichardt employs a 4:3 or ‘square’ aspect ratio. In that earlier film, there was some very deliberate thinking behind it. By slicing out the periphery, she not only replicated the perspective of the women’s bonnets, but also added to the sense of unseen danger. Here it’s a far more intimate application, forcing the viewer to focus only on those things directly in front of us. In this way, we fully absorb every word and natural element that Reichardt and regular cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt focus on.

At one point in the film, Cookie and King-Lu discuss their differing views of the frontier. “It doesn’t seem new to me,” says Cookie. “It seems old.” Which is a bit like watching a Kelly Reichardt film. Her recurring motifs are familiar, and the setting is as old as cinema itself, but it still feels fresh and immediate at every turn.

2019 | US| DIRECTOR: Kelly Reichardt | WRITER: Kelly Reichardt, Jonathan Raymond | CAST: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shephard, Gary Farmer, Lily Gladstone| DISTRIBUTOR: MIFF 2020 (AUS), A24 (US) | RUNNING TIME: 121 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6 August 2020 (MIFF)

August 7, 2020