DVD Review of Frozen River
Award-Winning Indie from Courtney Hunt, Starring Melissa Leo
© Cody Roy
Feb 15, 2009
Frozen River was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and since then, star Melissa Leo and debut director/screenwriter Courtney Hunt have both garnered Academy Award nominations. Still, these accolades might be doing the independent film a disservice by saddling viewers with soaring expectations.
Leo, however, does give the performance of her career as Ray Eddy, a hardened woman whose husband leaves her with two children to gamble their last payment on a dream trailer. Working part-time at the Yankee One Dollar store, she's now more desperate than ever to feed her children more than just popcorn and Tang. She's unwilling to let her teenage son T.J. (Charlie McDermott) quit school to help out, to lose the deposit on their new home, or to let the repo men even take away their TV, yet she must prove resourceful.
Ray Meets Her Mirror
Native American Lilah Littlejohn (Misty Upham), meanwhile, has issues of her own. Her mother-in-law stole her one-year-old son, so she's forced to spend most her nights perched in a tree outside the home, trying to catch a glimpse of her boy. Too poor to afford glasses and, therefore, too farsighted to hold down a legitimate job, Lilah hangs out at the Bingo parlor on the Mohawk reservation. One day, she happens upon a Dodge Spirit (abandoned by Ray's husband) with the keys in the ignition and decides to steal it, which is how the two women's worlds collide.
While out searching for her husband, Ray comes across the Spirit and demands that Lilah give it back at gunpoint. But Lilah has an idea: she knows the kind of people who would pay well for a vehicle (like the Spirit) with enough trunk-space to smuggle two Chinese or Pakistani illegal aliens across the frozen river comprising the U.S.-Canada border. Despite their differences, the two women quickly recognize their need for each other. Ray requires Lilah to deal with the criminals involved, whereas Lilah realizes the immunity from state troopers that driving alongside a middle-aged white woman might afford.
Critique
Hunt does an exceptional job of depicting the desolation in this frozen landscape, but her greatest achievement is going the length of the film without any of the schmaltz one would expect from such a plot. She does not give into the Thelma-and-Louise-girl-bonding sentimentalism; Ray and Lilah, in fact, barely speak to each other. They are only brought together by necessity. Their commonality is desperation.
Ironically, the central metaphor of the frozen river turns out to be the film's weakest element in that it lends itself to the type of drama the movie does not deliver. Two women smuggling illegal aliens across a potentially treacherous pathway could easily be the setup for some level of thriller, yet Frozen River never so much as hints at drama. It's as though the deliberately vast emotional distance between Ray and Lilah displaces their combined weight to the extent that breaking through the ice is impossible.
