Film

In many ways, Frozen River feels like a throwback to the go-go indie days of the early 1990s. Working-class mom Ray Eddie (Leo) hasn’t asked for much out of life, but she’s gotten even less. When her gambling-fool husband skips out with their savings a week before Christmas, she finds herself unable to pay for her pinched, pathetic version of the American dream (a prefab double-wide trailer). She’s barely able to scrape together grocery money to feed her sons (McDermott and Reilly). Ray gets involved in smuggling illegal immigrants across the Canadian border via an Indian reservation, with help from an equally desperate Native American (Upham) who delivers an iffy line of legal justification about the reservation having its own laws. In shades of slushy winter gray, much moral and political agonizing ensues.

What saves the film is Leo’s raw, bold performance. Leo’s face shows every care and frustration in worry-lines that look as if they’ve been plowed into her cheeks and brow. We can see in her tense body language and cramped gestures the toll poverty takes. The points Hunt wants to make may not be profound (desperate people do desperate things; morality takes a backseat, but not forever), but Leo makes them seem fresh.