Vote Independent -- Frozen River

This movie kept surprising me. Whenever I thought I knew where it was going, the story would veer another way.

Melissa Leo plays Ray Eddy, a weary but loving mother who is raising her two boys in a beat up old trailer in a bleak northern American town, up where the St. Lawrence River marks the border with Canada. She has a deposit down on a double wide, a nice new mobile home with a Jacuzzi tub and lots of insulation against the fierce northern winter; it’s supposed to be a Christmas present, but a week before the holiday her gambling husband takes off with the family savings, leaving her with an empty refrigerator and no way to play Santa. Desperate, she hooks up with Lila, a young woman from the nearby Mohawk reservation; they form an uneasy partnership smuggling illegal immigrants into the country by driving them across the frozen St. Lawrence, hidden inside the trunk of Ray’s car.

This is a remarkably honest film; it takes us right into Lila and Ray’s lives without any Hollywood gloss. It’s shot so intimately that you can almost feel the cold of the northeastern winter – I actually worried that Lila didn’t have enough blankets on her bed. And while two women are at the heart of this movie it isn’t a chick film –they’re smugglers, after all (there are plenty of heart stopping moments), and they aren’t remotely glamorous.

Melissa Leo (she’s been in a bunch of movies, and she pops up on TV) gives a tremendous performance; there is Oscar talk but it’s always a tough road when the film is this small. Frozen River won the Grand Jury Prize for Drama at Sundance, and it’s a big critical fave. Highly recommended, especially if you’re in the mood for a non-Hollywood film.