Frozen River

A belated release on this side of the Atlantic for director Courtney Hunt’s robust, entertaining drama, despite celebrity endorsements from the likes of Mr. Quentin Tarantino and an Oscar nod for Melissa Leo’s storming performance. Better late than never, we say. Frozen River, like Wendy And Lucy is a proper recession era flick, a deceptively low key thriller set against appalling poverty. Ms. Leo plays Ray Eddy, a working McWage mom, struggling to make ends meet when, right before Christmas, her no good husband leaves her and sons, Richard and James, with debts they can’t possibly hope to pay.
A chance encounter on the Mohawk reservation between New York State and Quebec leads to an opportunity to make money alongside Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) smuggling illegal immigrants across the icy wasteland of the title. It’s a dangerous enterprise but it might, at least, allow Ray to pay off the men coming to take her TV away.
Despite it’s gritty, post-Cassevetes aesthetic and beautifully naturalistic patois, this is grand old-school melodrama, a sort of 21st century Mildred Pierce. It works on any number of levels, as an exercise in white knuckle tension, as a big, bold story, as a series of poignant tableaux on family life and deprivation. It’s not often you find tear jerking goodbyes and exhilarating car chases co-existing so happily together in the same movie. Bravo, Ms. Hunt.