Frozen River Is Fantastic!

Opening Friday is a fantastic indie film, Frozen River. Melissa Leo gives an achingly authentic portrait of a woman on the edge -- as Ray Eddy, a mother struggling to raise two kids in a wintry U.S./Canada border town. Her husband has left her, gambling away their savings before Christmas, and Ray enters a shady scheme with a down on her luck Mohawk woman Lila (Misty Upham), who is smuggling illegal aliens across the border in the trunk of her car. Leo is one of those actresses I’ve loved since seeing her on TV’s Homicide, and she gives this woman a fierce vulnerability but also shows her brittle toughness as well. Director Courtney Hunt’s film won Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Festival and expertly illustrates the thin ice these two desperate woman of different cultures skate on in this tense, splendid film.