First Cow review – gentle heist movie is one of a kind

Few contemporary filmmakers are better at transposing pockets of American society to the screen than Kelly Reichardt, who directs as though pulling from a secret well of nuance and empathy that only she is privy to. A strangely precise kind of naturalism has framed the majority of Reichardt's films to date – be they set in the past or the modern day. What unites them is their focus on outsiders in transit, displaced and disillusioned, and of small, seemingly insignificant moments leading to big revelations.

First Cow is another film cast in this filmmaker's typically quiet style, a bovine-fuelled western that serves, in a way, as yet another deconstruction of the genre, like Reichardt's own Meek's Cutoff. Again, she takes familiar elements and tropes and recontextualises them, granting agency to characters otherwise marginalised or sidelined. So here we get the story of an American cook and his Chinese partner, who – in a tale one might say was inherently uncinematic – find their true calling in the “oily cake” business in 1820s Oregon. It is at once an unconventional heist movie, a western bromance, and a gentle tirade against the pitfalls of capitalism.

John Magaro plays Otis “Cookie” Figowitz, a cook with dreams of opening his own bakery, but who for the meantime is slumming it with a group of trappers who have grown increasingly hostile towards his company. One night Cookie encounters a Chinese immigrant named King-Lu (Orion Lee), naked and being hunted. After Cookie helps Lu to escape, the men part ways, though the generosity and affection of their first encounter creates something unshakeable – perhaps even romantic – between the pair, so that when they later run into one another by chance, we know their fates are entwined.

Cookie's talk of owning his own bakery – and one bite of an oily cake – is all Lu needs to usher in big plans. The only problem is that Cookie's recipe requires milk, and there's just one cow in the area – the First Cow – owned by a pompous character we come to know only as the Chief Factor (Toby Jones). So friendship morphs into partnership, the two routinely sneaking into a field and milking the cow by the cover of night, only to head into town the next day to sell off their goodies. It isn't long before they're making a small fortune.

[Read More: Coverage from Glasgow Film Festival 2021]

While there is no denying the probing of early capitalism, this is mostly a story of friendship. It is the bond between Cookie and Lu – never overstated – that inflicts First Cow with an unmistakable warmth and humanity, as their soft-spoken conversations, or their sense of merely understanding one another without having to speak at all, gives them something to cling to in a world that has branded them as outsiders. Reichardt might choose to open the film in the present day with a seemingly macabre revelation, but as we slowly come to realise the implications, we gain an unexpected sense of peace.

Like the film, there is something equally sad and humorous about the cow itself: passive and bound to a fate it did not choose, unknowingly causing drama by simply standing there and producing the milk. And there is something very cathartic in watching the rough, sordid men of the Oregon Trail, who spit and fight and drink and swear, unexpectedly won over by such a delicate, baked treat. In tasting Cookie's cakes – deep-fried, dabbed with honey and then dusted with cinnamon – expressions of distrust become child-like and filled with wonder. “I taste London in this cake,” laments Jones' Chief Factor, exemplifying the power of food to transport us to the past. It is impossible to watch him take a bite without wanting one for yourself.

Even when the “action” picks up, so to speak, this movie is slow-going and mediative. I admit, at times, even as a seasoned Reichardt fan, the movie's languish nature threw me. I wondered why she spent quite as much time concentrating on the events of the beginning, and the end, than the more intriguing middle. Later, away from the film, the choices appear better weighed – and are perhaps easier to appreciate.

This is a small film with a fable-like quality, quietly tragic and humorous in its chronicling of a melancholy folly, its gentle, innocent characters unknowingly caught like the squirrels we see snagged in Lu's traps. As with much of Reichardt, the slightness can at first be mistaken for something undercooked. But First Cow leaves quite a taste in the mouth. It really is proof that even the smallest of concepts can be made into affectionate, subversive, and moving cinema. Or should that be moo-ving?

First Cow was screened as part of the Glasgow Film Festival 2021. It will be released in the UK on MUBI on May 28.