Frozen River, written and directed by Courtney Hunt, presents a multiplicity of themes, hence its fascination: It can be viewed as a thriller; it is also a tale of morality, told, oddly enough, against the backdrop of immorality, or at least, illegality in the eyes of the law.
In upstate New York, after her husband has run off with the family's down payment for their longed-for dream home, trailer mom Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) gets into smuggling illegal immigrants from Canada into the U.S. across a Mohawk Indian reservation. It's tense and dangerous work, and Ray can only accomplish it with the aid of a widowed Mohawk woman, Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), who needs to raise a large sum of money in order to regain custody of her infant who has been "stolen" by her mother-in-law.
The two women, at first distrusting each other, experience friction. But ultimately their mutual needs draw them together. The women must drive a car across the treacherous ice, avoiding "black ice" which would result in disaster. They also must avoid the government agents on the lookout for nefarious activities.
With the aid of a Mohawk dealer, the women are able to make several runs across the frozen St. Lawrence River, carrying illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants in the trunk of Ray's car. All goes well at first, but later, when a run goes bad and with the Quebec police after them, the pair is trapped on the reservation, where their fate is now in the hands of the tribal council, whose demands on the two women are as stringent as those of the government agents.
Now Ray and Lila's loyalty is put to the severest of tests. How they solve their problem makes for a vivid and heartbreaking climax.
Performances by the two women are nothing short of spectacular, particularly in the case of Melissa Leo's Ray, who appears to have been lifted out of reality and onto the screen. Others in leading roles include Charlie McDermott, Michael O'Keefe, and Mark Boone Jr.
Frozen River, which won the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, was selected to open the recent New Directors/New Films festival, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. The film will open nationally under the aegis of Sony Pictures Classics.
Diana Barth writes and publishes New Millennium, an arts newsletter.
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