The term “cosy crime” describes the reassuring, cardigan-swaddled whodunnits that currently dominate both page and screen, but it carries different connotations for Kelly Reichardt, director of the new heist movie The Mastermind, as it surely must for anyone from a law enforcement family. Reichardt’s mother was an undercover narcotics agent, her father a crime scene detective. When the couple split up, she also gained an FBI agent as a stepfather. During weekends with her dad, who moved into a house with four other recently divorced colleagues, she would sometimes be given mysteries to solve, like some kind of junior Thursday Murder Club.
“It sounds really cute,” says the 5ft-tall, 61-year-old director, whose film could not feel more timely, given the Louvre heist. “But I was only young, and I’d often wait for him at his office where there were these big horrific images on the walls. That’s not good for the forming brain. My sister and I have a joke now whenever one of us is upset, ‘Aww, get into bed and watch some crime, then you’ll feel better.’”
