During the recent Sundance Institute At BAM , we caught “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” “Choke,” “American Teen” and the film below. Once we catch up we’ll have more reviews and Q&As from the screenings (or you can check Twitter for our insta-reviews). We were on hand opening night for the Brooklyn premiere of “Frozen River.”
What is it about some indie filmmakers, and many of that Sundance mien, that want to torture you with the abject misery that befalls their already down and out hard luck characters? “Frozen River,” the big Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance 08, definitely falls into this category of witnessing near-tragedy and accursed fortune befall people that already have it pretty rough.
Set in frozen, upstate New York, Melissa Leo (best known as Benicio Del Toro’s tortured wife in “21 Grams”) plays Ray Eddy, a rode hard and put away wet single mother who leads a hardscrabble life trying to fend for her two kids. Her minimum wage job can barely cobble together their lunch money and her gambling addicted husband just left the family for who knows where – Atlantic City? House payments are late, and almost everything in the house is up for repossession including the kids’ beloved TV.
In searching for her deadbeat husband, she finds his car being driven by a local scamming Native American girl named Lila (a revelatory Misty Upham) and after an altercation discovers he’s abandoned vehicle and she’s stolen it. Strapped for cash and on the verge of forfeiting the new trailer home she is in the midst of buying, Leo reluctantly agrees to participate in a smuggling operation that involves driving her car through a Mohawk reservation and over the frozen St. Lawrence river into Canada to bring over illegal immigrants even more desperate than the unlikely duo are. The con artist Lila soon reveals her motivation: she has a daughter to fend for, and one that’s been taken away from her.
The money is good, the ice holds and the pair swear off any more attempts at such a ludicrously risky proposition, but the temptation to score just a few more dollars to set their situations straight proves to be too alluring. One “last” border run nearly results in the death of a newborn, but still the duo persist. Soon the river leads to its inevitable path: a face off with the already suspicious law.
Without revealing too much, if it weren’t for a semi-positive ending, “Frozen River,” would just be excruciatingly bleak. First-time feature-length filmmaker Courtney Hunt moves with a even-handed and neutral view of it all, but the seemingly insurmountable obstacles these characters face are simply gut-wrenching at times. The performances are top-notch and the film quietly speaks volumes about the reasons why people will perform shockingly irresponsible acts of risk and stupidity to survive the perils of poverty, but sometimes a filmmaker has to give audiences a breather from the unrelenting hardship. “Frozen River” is a powerful depiction of desperation, but next time, here’s to hoping Hunt gives her characters even the slightest glimmer of hope along the way to redemption.
“Frozen River” opens in limited New York, Los Angeles release on August 1. [B]. The film’s score is composed by Winnipeg singer Keri Latimer and features some songs by Pompous Pilate and others.