Two women driving in the snow in the dead of a winter night slip from the shoreline onto the broad, imposing expanse of a frozen lake. Itâs not the action of people who have any choice in the matter and in FROZEN RIVER, the reasons for this action are spelled out with a quiet intensity that is overwhelming. The women are smuggling undocumented aliens from Canada into the United States and while the act might be criminal, their reasons are anything but. This is a spare, unsentimental story of desperate measures and the decent people driven to them.
It opens with a montage of ice, snow, and the sort of winter daylight that barely lights up the sky. The first person on camera is Ray (Melissa Leo), a woman on the wrong end of a hard life harboring the modest dream of a double-wide trailer to replace the dilapidated one she and her two sons inhabit. The camera pans slowly up from her bare foot, an exuberant rose tattooed on her big toe, up to a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and then Rayâs face. Impassive, but etched with a sadness that the one tear that drops down her check canât hope to assuage. She lights up, brushes away the tear, and puts on her game face to deal with the first humiliation of her day. Sheâs short of cash, thanks to a husband who has bailed on her with the money that she needs to pay the man driving up with the double-wide trailer delivery. Ray makes excuses, she bargains, she pleads, and, in what Leo makes manifest in one of the great film performances, she swallows the pain and the embarrassment in the eyes of her oldest son and while acknowledging it, pretends to believe that everything will be alright. Hope is all she has left to give her kids, even though the older boyâs eyes are already going dead with a middle-aged cynicism. The performance, the direction, and the writing make the fear that is the constant companion of this family as bitingly real as the hollowness of the Christmas season at hand, and of the breakfast of popcorn and Tang® that is all Ray can put on the table.
A clerk in a dollar store, no resources, no cash, and no prospects of coming up with the money she needs to take delivery on that double-wide instead of losing the deposit already paid, Ray tries to find her husband. Instead, she finds Lila (Misty Upham), the Mohawk who took the car that Rayâs husband left at the bus station. What follows is not just the story of the peculiar business partnership that the two fall into, but a brilliant character study of lives lived under crushing pressure by people with no time for self-pity. The taciturn bingo parlor attendant who lives in a camper in the middle of the woods introduces Ray to smuggling undocumented aliens across the Canadian border as a way to score quick cash. As they cross back and forth over the frozen lake between Canada and the U.S., she opens up to her with revelations that are as astonishing as they are heartbreaking. Comments dropped indifferently amid barbed observations, including the âI donât usually work with white peopleâ that begins their relationship, that and the tussle over a gun that draws blood. In the process, the differences between them, of race, of resentments, of worldviews, become negligible in a script that celebrates the toughness and resilience of these women who have only themselves to rely on.
Leo is the dynamo of the piece and Oscarâ¢-worthy doesnât begin to cover her work. This isnât a performance, itâs an event. Balancing the fine edge of hopelessness against a gritty determination, there are depths of raw pain that are startling and so deeply moving that that one tear shed at the beginning of the film, brushed away with an impatient gesture becomes an act of defiance of the first order. There is a later moment, though, when Leo stares in the mirror and the look on her face is an expression that seems to be reliving Rayâs entire life to that point, wondering how it was that she got to this point, and how she is going to get through the next minute, hour, day, year, lifetime. The tenderness of a kid with dreams is still there despite everything and it is wondrous to see before the adult returns to get on with it. Upham should not be overlooked. Hers is a subtle performance, taking on the world with her face set into an immobile expression beyond emotion, the lines barked, the attitude defiant, and yet it is vibrant, visceral. Lilaâs unguarded moments are achingly sad, her smile, when she finally finds something to smile about, a bombshell.
FROZEN WATER is a stunning exploration of the working poor that is uncompromising in both its story and its point of view. It evokes the claustrophobic sense of impotence for those at the bottom of the economic ladder, while as the same time imbuing that class with nobility for not giving up. Right and wrong cease to be a comfortable black and white. Instead, they morph into a continuum of gray where the choice that puts food on the table and the choice that is legal can be at odds, but not a subject of debate
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