| Review:
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Two groups in American society that more often than
not endure life as nearly invisible emotional wallpaper
in movies, are women and nonwhites. But Courtney Hunt's
Frozen River, a radiant gem of regional filmmaking, places
these characters front and center in both mutual and conflicting
struggles alike, touching on poverty, single motherhood,
female empowerment and collective sisterhood crossing racial
and cultural lines.***
Playing out against the harsh and punishing backdrop
of a brutal winter in Upstate Massena NY, near the Quebec
border around Christmastime, Frozen River probes the grueling
circumstances surrounding the lives of three impoverished
mothers in crisis. Ray (Melissa Leo) toils at a minimum
wage job at the local Yankee Dollar store to support her
two sons. But she's in danger of losing a new home along
with other items about to be repossessed, ever since her
gambler husband recently abandoned the family and left with
what little money they had.***
When Ray spots his car being driven around by Lila
(Misty Upham), a young woman from the neighboring Mohawk
Reservation, an ugly confrontation ensues. The two eventually
declare an uneasy truce, rife with racism and mutual suspicion,
when Lila convinces Ray that they can both make substantial
cash by driving the car across the frozen but exceedingly
dangerous St. Lawrence River along the Canadian border,
and smuggling undocumented humans into the US. Apparently
the more promising route through Indian territory is off
limits to the authorities of either country.***
Ray at first balks, then reluctantly agrees as her
financial woes loom. Lila is consumed by very different
anxieties. She's also been abandoned by her husband, and
her mother-in-law has taken her newborn baby away from her,
likely expecting to prevail legally since Lila has no visible
- or at least legal - means of support. And Lila hopes to
raise money to provide for her child.***
The repeated covert missions by car across the precarious,
cracking icy waters, create ever mounting tense, eerie drama,
as the two women smuggle terrified Asians squeezed into
the trunk, humans who are bound for lifelong servitude as
repayment for their journey, to callous extortionists. There's
also another kind of chilling progression, evident in Ray's
psychological transformation from anxious, caring mom to
a woman increasingly obsessed by materialism and greed,
and who seems to have abandoned her humanity along the way.
It's only after she unknowingly tosses the bundled baby
of a Pakistani mom in transit out on the lake, insisting
that the family luggage most likely contains terrorist bombs,
that Ray begins to face her corrupted life values.***
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