Damsel

Having riffed on the Coen classic Fargo (1995) in Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014), David and Nathan Zellner pay homage to an entire genre in this amiably meandering revisionist western. It's another questing saga, which follows shambling pioneer Samuel Alabaster (Robert Pattinson) and Parson Henry (David Zellner) on a trek across the wilderness to rescue Alabaster's beloved, Penelope (Mia Wasikowska). As he croons about his "honeybun", Samuel recalls James Stewart in Destry Rides Again (1939). But the Zellners have an ace up their sleeve and they play it with such insouciant panache that it takes a while to refocus on the markedly different second half of the story. Pattinson plays marvellously against type, and there are some knowingly droll performances from the supporting cast. Cinematographer Adam Stone reverences the Fordian landscape, while the script (with perhaps just a hint of smugness) debunks various frontier clichés and caricatures, exposing the pernicious sociocultural assumptions on which they're based.