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The 'western', as you know, is the opposite of a geographical space. In the West there are no maps or laws or grammars. The border is just at the limit of the last steps taken by the outsider. The ' western ' is, therefore, an essential and existentially violent place; a place of dominion and humiliation where man (always he) conquers what exterminates, understands what annihilates. But it is also a mythical space.

If we look at the ' Borgian ' categories of all possible stories, the ' western ' would be on the side of the search story; the one who makes relatives to the Argonauts and settlers; to the Holy Grail seekers and those infected by the gold rush. The ' western ' is populated by unfinished and endless beings, out of the norm, which, as Horacio Quiroga said, what happens to billiard balls: they give effect with tumbles. They barely play the band, they walk to the wrong side.

'First cow' , by Kelly Reichardt, is, in addition to the first truly relevant film presented to the competition at the Berlinale (he did on Saturday), a ' western '. But it is very much like the director. As I did in the masterful 'Meek's Cutoff', the Miami filmmaker manages to go around each of the common and extraordinary places, both of which make up the legend. In that 2010 film he turned the genre's obsession with open spaces into simple perspiration. Claustrophobic and even provocatively vulgar, the only place available to the epic was the equestrian. There were, of course, horses.

Now, place your story there in Oregon. There are trappers, wild and wild trappers. There is also a chef specializing in pastry and an Chinese entrepreneur with an unusual facility to make mistakes. They are people all with effect. The story of the first cow that stepped on that place is told. She is the outsider, she is John Wayne, but with boobs. And give milk. It is about narrating the extravagant relationship of those present, all unfinished and endless, with something as delicate as a wind donut and, most importantly, with one of its basic ingredients: cow's milk, not Wayne's. The pastry chef triumphs, but only with the complicity of the bovid that does not, and here the problem, of its owner.

Philippe Garrel in front of the team of 'Le sel des larmes'.

With these elements, Reichardt manages to compose one of his stories of wandering people while placing in quotes (or in italics, as desired) all the mythology that configures, again, the 'western'. It is a film as full of humor as of sadness, as fun as it is obviously tragic, as free as meticulously planned. And, suddenly, everything resonates, everything makes sense. Indeed, from the very condition of man, of the man who conquers, humiliates and annihilates; to the ultimate meaning of property and politics itself, going through the matter that shapes the dreams of anyone who dreams, everything is there described and punctuated in a language that is cinematographic as deeply poetic. And backwards. Simpler, a beautiful movie.

Garrel's return

For the rest, and perhaps at the opposite pole, one of the filmmakers appeared on the path of holiness. If Reichardt summons his ideology to exalt and sublimate him at the same time, Garrel, the master Garrel, does just the opposite. Far from his last, brilliant and if you want repeated prodigy presented at Cannes of 2017, Philippe Garrel went to Berlin with 'Le Sel des Larmes' (The Salt of Tears), his most heartless film (for lacking a soul) in years . If with ' Lover for a day ' he closed in the best way the trilogy of jealousy that began in 2013 with 'La jalousie' precisely, now begins a rare monologue where his proverbial and deep lightness seems only simplicity. Neither perfection nor freckles of Louise Chevillotte wear what they should.

The story of a carpenter (Logann Autofermo) in love with love is told. The man arrives in Paris and loves. Go back to your town and do it again. And when the time comes to return again to the capital, he insists. The problem is neither the total absence of criteria nor the suspiciously macho (or just clumsy) display or the emptiness that presides over everything. In reality, all that was always there as the very soul of an essentially free and conscious narrative of the beauty of everyday reality in black and white. What goes wrong is reluctance, erratic exercise and repetition not so much of gestures as of 'tics'. Brilliant the appearance of Oulaya Amamara and disconcerting everything else.

Already out of the competition section, the third film shown during the gala schedule was 'Persian lessons' , by Vadim Perelman. The director of 'House of sand and fog' is in charge of signing the unfailing production of concentration camps that can never be missing at the Berlin Festival. The story seems so extraordinary and full of meaning that the orthodox rigor, almost finished, of the staging ends up hurting more.

To escape death, the Jew brilliantly interpreted by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart ( '120 beats per minute ') pretends to be Persian. The obsession of a Nazi officer to learn Farsi and flee to Tehran when everything is over is worth it as a safe conduct. The problem is that the protagonist will have to teach a language of which everything is unknown. And it will. It will be enough for you to use your disproportionate memory to invent a language from the present of the indicative of the verb to be. Apparently, this, more typical of a Borges story (always him), happened.

What on paper gives for a reflection on the limits of language, on the very meaning of communication and, hurrying, on humanity without more; what is the same for a metaphysics treatise that for a detailed study of the customs of the world, ends, pity, in a melodrama 'of concentration' as insipid and routine as correct. The correction is a double-edged sword. He saves some stories and others, for all they promise, condemns them. There is conviction for 'Persian lessons'.

And so things went a day marked by a movie, one of those that justifies an entire festival: 'First cow ' is milk; John Wayne's milk.

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