Frozen River

Courtney Hunt's Frozen River chronicles the lives of two down-on-their-luck mothers trying to catch a break. It's a week before Christmas, and Ray Eddy's (Melissa Leo) deadbeat husband grabs the family savings (which they were going to use to pay for a new house) and heads to Atlantic City (they have two children). Ray tries to find him only to accidentally meet Lila (Misty Upham) who has stolen his car. Lila tricks Ray into helping her transport immigrants illegally across the Canadian/U.S border (both sides of the border are Mohawk territory), by car, over a frozen river. Initially, Ray reacts in a hostile manner, but after being refused full-time employment at the dollar store where she's been working for two years (by a smug teenaged manager), she warms up to the idea, and the border runs increase.

Hunt's screen-play hauntingly captures the impoverished domain of these frustrated anti-heros. The language is stormy and the characters weathered; they aren't noble disney-esque 'hope-things-will-work-out-some-day-caricatures,' they're ruff-and-tumble derelict survivalists. Leo's performance is strong as she evocatively portrays a beaten-down wife attempting to competently balance several different social roles, including responsible mother, dedicated employee, concerned citizen, and caring wife, all the while suffering a perennial nervous breakdown. Her wager parallels that of her husband's insofar as she takes serious risks to make a buck; Lila provides bulletproof reasons which suggest those whom they transport across the border are not criminals, but she still can't shake the possibility. So she walks the hard-line between personal success and legal destitution, doing what she can to get by, suffering, staggering, surviving. Her relationship with her son (T. J. played by Charlie McDermott) is enough to remind many 30 year-old males that they were once an asshole, and the strength she shows after being fucked around one too many times courageously demonstrates a desperate rationality.

Lila's tough too, and when presented with an opportunity to take back her one-year old son she takes it, moving on. Regarding opportunity, neither of these women have much, but they make ends meet by whatever-means-necessary, continually crossing their frozen cultural rivers.