Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch is a das­tard­ly cow­poke in The Pow­er of the Dog trailer

Twelve long years have elapsed since we last saw a new fea­ture from Jane Cam­pi­on, and while her stint on TV mak­ing Top of the Lake in the mean­time helped along the wait, there’s no sub­sti­tute for the medi­um that made her name. Even if a small eter­ni­ty hadn’t gone by since her last big-screen work, there’d still be a sense of occa­sion to The Pow­er of the Dog as the lat­est from the first woman to win the Palme d’Or, and one in a small hand­ful nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Director.

A major auteur returns in the first trail­er for the wind-bit­ten West­ern; if there was any doubt that she may have lost her touch in the inter­im years, this first look at a hand­some, sen­si­tive take on the tra­di­tion­al oater will assured­ly put them to bed.

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch deliv­ers a career-best per­for­mance as the rough-and-tum­ble Phil Bur­bank, a ranch­er work­ing with his milder-man­nered broth­er George (Jesse Ple­mons) on the Mon­tana plains cir­ca 1925. While din­ing in town one day, they both make note of the come­ly wid­ow Rose (Kirsten Dun­st) and her less-than-hardy son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee); George mar­ries her, and Phil wages a cam­paign of casu­al cru­el­ty against the woman and her boy – until, seem­ing­ly with­out rea­son, he takes the young­ster under his wing.

A psy­cho­log­i­cal bat­tle of wills engulfs the makeshift fam­i­ly, as Phil and George offer unformed Peter con­flict­ing mod­els of mas­culin­i­ty while Rose sinks deep­er into melan­choly. Cam­pi­on ren­ders it all with a classicist’s mas­tery, con­trast­ing the sweep­ing beau­ty of the set­ting with the mor­tal sins com­mit­ted there.

We’ll be hear­ing quite a bit about this film in the weeks to come, with a world pre­mière at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val fol­lowed by a Spe­cial Pre­sen­ta­tion screen­ing through the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and then anoth­er screen­ing at the New York Film Fes­ti­val as the Cen­ter­piece selec­tion. It’s shap­ing up to be one of the high­est-pro­file titles mak­ing the rounds this fall, and come awards sea­son, it’s sure to be one of Netflix’s seri­ous bids for gold as well. We’ve all missed you, Jane Campion.

The Pow­er of the Dog comes to select cin­e­mas in the US on 17 Novem­ber, then Net­flix on 1 December.