vernon film society
Bringing the best in world and Canadian film to film lovers of Vernon and the North Okanagan
FROZEN RIVER
Director: Courtney Hunt
Cast: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, James Reilly, Michael O’Keefe
Run Time: 97 minutes
Country: USA
Year: 2008
Language: English
Rating: PG (Coarse language, violence)
Reviews: www.metacritic.com/film/titles/frozenriver
Official site: www.sonyclassics.com/frozenriver/
Courtney Hunt’s striking directorial debut, Frozen River, won the Grand Jury Prize for best dramatic feature at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. The feature chronicles the friendship between two disparate women, one white and the other Native American, in the Mohawk reservation area straddling the American-Canadian border on the St. Lawrence River.
Veteran actress Melissa Leo (21 Grams, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) gives a powerful and affecting performance as Ray Eddy, a poor working mother of two who forms an unusual friendship with Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham, who also contributes a strong performance), a tough, street-smart Mohawk woman who makes ends meet by smuggling illegal immigrants into the United States. After Ray’s gambling addicted husband runs out on her, she is left to take care of her teen son T.J. (Charlie McDermott) and younger son Ricky (James Reilly) in a run-down trailer home. When she tries to track down her husband at the local bingo hall, she encounters Lila and is at first manipulated into doing a smuggling run for a ring on the Canadian side of the frozen St. Lawrence that is masterminded by the threatening Quebecer Jacques Bruno (Mark Boone Junior). Out of necessity, the two women soon find themselves collaborating on the illegal enterprise, with Hunt deftly integrating their gritty personal lives into the larger socio-political situation contextualizing the smuggling of immigrants across the border.
Frozen River integrates the best elements of intimate character studies with a narrative that keeps spiralling in various unanticipated directions. The end result is a tense, humanistic portrait about individual courage and sacrifice in the unforgiving netherworld of human trafficking, where no victories are gained without enormous cost.
“Frozen River, a debut film written and directed by Courtney Hunt, never steps wrong… [It] is one of those rare independent films that knows precisely what it intends, and what the meaning of the story is.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
