FILMS

FIRST COW By inclination a miniaturist, Kelly Reichardt isn’t necessarily what you’d think of as a great director in auteur upper case. But she’s one of the most individual and incisive voices in contemporary cinema, whose vision becomes richer and more complex film by film. After eco-politics drama Night Moves and character portmanteau Certain Women, Reichardt’s First Cow returns to the unmapped margins of the western, which she previously explored in 2010’s pioneer drama Meek’s Cutoff.

Set in backwoods Oregon in the 1820s, is a tragi-comedy about friendship and survival. It concerns two men who provide each other with shelter from a brutish world: quiet ‘Cookie’ (John Magaro), who’s having a miserable time providing victuals for a party of trappers, and King Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese immigrant getting by perilously on his›wits. Forming a close