High Museum of Art: Films

Wendy and Lucy

Before the economy officially went belly-up, two American indie directors were already sending dispatches from the hardscrabble heartland. Frozen River and Wendy & Lucy, both recently released on DVD, are films by women directors who have a lot to say about invisibility, suffering, and resilience. Though very different in tone, both feature women who are on their own and down to their last dollar. No loveable, suddenly mature shlub (the current incarnation of Prince Charming) is waiting in the wings for these gals; rescue isn’t even part of the equation.

Frozen River, directed by Courtney Hunt, is the meatier of the two movies; it’s as emotionally satisfying as a melodrama but its realism tempers that genre’s tear-jerking conventions. (Watch the trailer.) Set in upstate New York, where the Mohawk reservation abuts the Canadian border, the film unfolds during the days leading up to Christmas. It centers on two single mothers, Ray (Melissa Leo), who’s got two boys and a big hole in her bank account left by her gambling husband; and Lila (Misty Upham), a tough young Mohawk mourning for the baby that her mother-in-law has stolen. Lila, reckless in her grief, is a smuggler who drives illegals across the frozen St. Lawrence River. She makes good money, and figures that for enough of a bribe, she’ll be able to get her baby back.  Ray, faced with the loss of her whole investment unless she can come up a substantial payment on a double wide, reluctantly asks Lila to cut her in on a couple of trips.

Frozen River

American movies love to celebrate the quasi-erotic abandon of outlaws behind the wheel — think Thelma and Louise or Bonnie and Clyde — but don’t count Ray and Lila among them. The dominant emotions in Frozen River are anxiety and desperation. This is a movie about being left in the cold, both literally and metaphorically. Ray, a smart woman trying to raise two kids on a part-time Dollar Store salary, is reduced to feeding her sons popcorn and Tang for breakfast (and no, it isn’t played for comedy). Like poor people all across the country, she’s frozen out, but at least she still knows what she feels. Lila is emotionally deadened by anger’s deep freeze, and it takes the movie’s version of a Christmas miracle to awaken her capacity to really believe in a future for herself and her child.

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