Frozen River

A compelling and original story fashioned from the fabric of social realism, Courtney Hunt’s film is a penetrating character study with a heavyweight central performance.

Ray (Melissa Leo) is trying to keep it together, working as many hours as she can get at the local grocery store, trying to get ahead on the mortgage payments to get her kids out of a trailer and into something more permanent. She’s not getting much help in that regard from her husband, a gambling addict who – as the film begins – has taken off in for an unspecified destination.

Ray looks for him everywhere she can think of, then sees a woman driving his car and follows her back to her trailer. Lila Littlejohn (Misty Upham) is a Mohawk Indian who claims to have found the car abandoned, and decided to put it to good use. She knows someone who will give them $2000 for it, she says… Which is how the women find themselves going into an uneasy partnership in the people smuggling business.

Frozen River gets its name and a good part of its drama from the unusual setting. Ray lives on the edge of the Mohawk reservation that spans both sides of the Saint Lawrence River. On the Northern shore, the Mohawk live in Canada. To the south, they are in the United States. Over the deep winter months, the Saint Lawrence freezes over. In some places, the ice is so thick you can drive a car across it. Course, you do have to know what you’re doing – and keep an eye out for the thaw.

These slippery border crossings are fraught with tension, and Hunt builds up the stakes every time. But – for better or worse – she resists the urge to turn the movie into a straight thriller. Her interest is always on the two women and the economic straits that compel them to risk so much.

If you don’t recognise Melissa Leo, the fortysomething actress playing Ray, then you must have missed the cutting edge cop series Homicide: Life on the Streets (1994-1997), in which she played Detective Kay Howard. Leo also had decent roles in 21 Grams and The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada (2005), but for the most part she’s toiled in the trenches of TV and low budget film without hitting lucky.

Until now, that is. Leo is a good advertisement for steering clear of Botox and the knife. She has a careworn face, lined and creased but authentic and expressive in a way that – to take an obvious example – Nicole Kidman’s isn’t. In Frozen River, Ray is permanently frazzled, but Leo lets us understand the practical considerations that govern the character’s questionable choices, and the ethical convictions that still inform her actions.

The Grand Jury prize winner at Sundance 2008, and a double Oscar-nominee to boot (best actress, Melissa Leo; original screenplay Courtney Hunt), Frozen River was shot on the cheap on digital video, and – ice scenes apart – it doesn’t muster much in the way of visual interest. The writing also tends towards the obvious in parts, particularly in a less than convincing climax. But it still feels grounded in real lives and real problems, and that counts for a lot. Especially when you have a performance as unsentimental and gutsy as Leo’s at the heart of things.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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