RIGA IFF: Afērists

Kelly Reichardt
The Mastermind
The Mastermind
US
2025, 110’, en
Age 16+

 

Mooney would like to be a Mr. Ripley – an art, jewellery and identity thief with a refined taste. The only difference is he isn’t quite as shrewd as he thinks he is, and he has a wife and a child. He leads the quietest middle-class life possible. Together with even more inept cohorts, he robs a museum in broad daylight and makes off with four Arthur Dove paintings. When the police start closing in on him, Mooney has no choice but to distance himself from the heist. A little shy, antisocial, clumsy like an Allen character – and clearly in over his head – he tries to cover up the crime and goes on the run.

 

The American classic Reichardt dismantles the most cigarette-stained and muscular genres – and the world looks on in admiration. Now it’s time for crime drama and Ocean’s Eleven – theft has never looked as unprepared as in this Cannes main competition entry, where it is as casual as popping down to the corner shop. British star Josh O’Connor, Alana Haim of Haim the band, and other actors meet up in 1970s Massachusetts to rewrite the genre. If with First Cow (2019) Reichardt transformed the most American genre – the Western – into a tale of nicking milk, then with the indie film emblem Wendy and Lucy (2008) she experimented with a woman-and-dog hero’s journey. Meanwhile, her latest work is a brilliant example of genre deconstruction – sure to draw a giggle at the undone shoelaces of the antihero and New Hollywood as the most gilded era of cinema.