'Frozen River' : gripping
By Joyce Glasser - 09/07/2009
A taut, atmospheric feature debut by writer/director Courtney Hunt, reminded the world what American independent cinema can be when it was nominated for Academy Awards in the best screenplay and best actress categories this year. Our first view of Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is a punishing close up of a woman in her forties without make- up; a face ravaged less by time than the merciless, long winters of upstate New York and anxiety about meeting the payments on a new mobile home while her husband is off gambling away the money.
An uncharacteristic tear that falls from her eye is quickly wiped away as she sends her two sons to school, aware they’ve had no breakfast. When Ray’s boss at a local discount store refuses to increase her hours, she forms a short-term partnership with Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), an equally desperate young Mohawk Indian woman. Their enterprise is smuggling illegal foreign workers from Canada, across the Saint Lawrence River, into New York State.
Ray Eddy can be added to the annals of the great American, blue collar workers in American cinema, but Hunt turns her into something much more real than archetypal. This is a woman on a mission, aware of what she has to do to house her family. Capable of breaking the law, Ray is also capable of great acts of courage and sacrifice.
Transmuting from a vulnerable victim into a wall of strength against the onslaughts of life at the edge of poverty, it’s as though Ray has wrapped herself in a suit of armour to get her through the ordeal, and, like Odysseus with the Sirens, refuses to be sidetracked.
While Ray drives the plot, it’s the unlikely collaboration between the two mother-smugglers of different ages and from different cultures that gives the script its fresh edge. Minimalizing sentimentality and maximising the dark, frozen atmosphere, Hunt drops these two female characters, with their dysfunctional families and financial woes, into one of the most gripping thrillers to come around in years.