Frozen River

How do you make a story about a poor woman trying to save up enough money to buy a double-wide trailer for herself and her two kids by running illegal immigrants across the United States-Canada border compelling enough for a feature-length film? It’s not glamorous, it’s not sexy - it’s not even very hopeful. Even if everything works out, all mom gets is...a bigger trailer. She’ll still have to haggle with her boss at the dollar store to see about being promoted - after two years - to assistant manager; and she’ll still have to worry about whether her husband has actually abandoned the family at Christmas or just gone off on, apparently, yet another gambling bender.

If you’re an aspiring filmmaker and are trying to make something along these lines work - doesn’t have to be the same thing, of course, but something that works with themes in the same ballpark of bleak as those noted above - you would do well to have a go at talking to Courtney Hunt, who wrote and directed Frozen River, a film that tells the story of the woman described above in the first paragraph. Hunt pulls it off, though with the occasional misstep.

The trick is not to condescend to the material. We can’t close our eyes to the plight of the cities, as it were, which swings around to sort of mean that we can’t forget that there are things in this world that we might not ever think of as important, but which mean the whole world to others. We don’t necessarily need to spread the wealth around so that everyone has the same amount of everything, but we do need to be cognizant of the fact that there is more to the world than what we see in front of us each day. Even in white Protestant America, there are lots of different flavors of vanilla; and the simple fact that something is not particularly valuable to you or me does not mean that that same thing cannot be of enormous value to someone else.

In the case of Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), that thing that has value is the double-wide trailer - with sound insulation - for which she has been saving the money she makes working part-time at the dollar store. The film opens on Ray looking into the glove compartment of her car and realizing that her gambling addict husband has run out on her and their two sons - at Christmas time - with the money they needed to secure delivery of their new home and ensure that they will not forfeit their deposit. She looks out into the distance with eyes that are too tired to be frightened, too worn down to be angry - though she is both frightened and angry.

Desperate to keep what is left of her family together and vaguely afloat she drives to the bingo hall where she believes her husband has gone with the money, only to find that, though his car is there, he is not. When she sees someone driving off in her husband’s car, she is justifiably irritated, and pursues the driver, who turns out to be a Mohawk Indian called Lila, with family issues of her own. Their confrontation ultimately draws Ray into the cat-and-mouse game of running illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Canadian border via the frozen St. Lawrence River. Ray wrestles with the moral and legal implications of these misadventures; and when she finally reaches the dead end at her dead end job, she decides, against her better judgment, to participate in enough of these runs across the border with Lila to raise the money she needs to get her trailer. Though she is not proud of the fact that she feels this is something she must do for her family, it is fairly simple to infer that this is not the first time that she has had to swallow her pride for the sake of her family.

The singular, repetitive nature of the plot - driven by Leo's controlled delivery and tremendous range of emotion contained in what seems to be variations on the same facial expression throughout the film - provides ample space for dialogue between Ray and Lila to occur and flesh out both characters, and for a quasi-symbiotic bond to form between them; and the inevitable involvement of the border patrol serves to develop the dramatic tension, though I don’t know that the whole thing rises quite to the level of “thriller,” as the film is in some places being billed.

The only real quibble I have with this one comes toward the end, where Hunt is required to make a turn - not a twist - in order to proceed to the correct ending of the film. She achieves the correct ending, but the turn feels a bit clumsy, as though the deliberate pace of the story to this point is so powerful that it has drawn Hunt into a comfort zone from which she cannot quite esacpe. The film clocks in at just a shade over ninety minutes, and I think that a few more minutes devoted to extending the suspense of the turn would have been beneficial. It’s a minor quibble, though; the film is otherwise quite rightly praised as a triumph for Hunt in her feature directorial debut. Melissa Leo’s performance and Hunt’s direction and writing, in that order, are the elements that make this a terrific movie.

Leo gets an Oscar nomination for her work here, but probably not the win. I know my buddy Steve isn’t big on the Oscars, but he digs on Kate Winslet (and, quite frankly, what straight guy doesn’t?), and this may be her year. Unless it’s a complete disaster, look for Revolutionary Road, still a few months away from release, to emerge as the favorite to bring home an armload of Oscars, more than likely led by Winslet for lead actress. Hot on her heels will be Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married (though if she wins it will be for the total combined weight of Brokeback Mountain, The Devil Wears Prada, and Rachel Getting Married) - but if either of those films/performances turns out to be less than is expected, Leo could slip in as a dark horse.