If you’re looking for the most self-assured, quietly transfixing debut feature of the year, look no further than director Celine Song’s contemplative Past Lives. I’m too old to describe her film as being “a vibe,” but that’s exactly what it is. Past Lives is like a series of emotions washing over the audience in waves. Song has taken autobiographical bits and pieces of herself to make an authentic, modern romance that feels hyper-specific to the immigrant experience and yet also universal to the human experience
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Think of Kelly Reichardt’s new film First Cow as a spiritual cousin and companion piece to P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. The films are about the American dream on the western frontier in the early 1800s (Cow) and the early 1900s (Blood). There Will Be Blood is about the American dream run amok on greed and unchecked success; it’s the story of an oil tycoon told on an epic scale. First Cow focuses on, essentially, a small business owner who goes out of business before ever striking it rich – if you’ve seen the film, you’ll get the irony of my putting it that way. It’s a tale of American entrepreneurial spirit on the smallest, most personal scale.
That’s not to suggest there are no dramatic stakes (pun intended) in First Cow. The contemplative pace of Reichardt’s film and the languorous nature of her camerawork both belie the story’s dramatic tension.
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