A Christmas Tale

As debut movies go, Frozen River isn't a bad one. Some would say that it is a thriller, others that it is a social drama, and it is not untrue on both accounts, but I prefer to say that it is a women movie – written and directed by a woman, telling the story of two women (the actresses are terrific)and, I guess, most likely to move women at the end of the day– and it is also an American movie. Not just American as being an Indie film from the U.S.A taking place in America and starring American actors, but as dealing with typically American themes.

The Frozen River of the title is the St Lawrence river between The U.S and Canada. Ray Eddy is a "mère courage", a middle-aged woman who's struggling to make a living with a part-time retail job, raising two sons (one is 15, the other is 5) in a squalid modular home while dreaming of a new doublewide...except that we find out at the beginning of the movie that her husband took off with the down payment for the new "house". One day, she comes across Lila, a Mohawk girl from the reservation that straddles the US-Canadian border. Lila lives in a caravan and gets Ray involved, against her will, in smuggling illegal immigrants. Christmas approaches, Ray can barely feed her kids (they subsist on pop-corn and drink Tang!), let alone pay the doublewide of her dreams or even a Christmas gift for her youngest son; her eldest tries to be the man of the house but worries that without money they might lose their rent-to-own television. Reluctantly first Ray teams up with Lila and the two of them begin to make runs across the frozen river carrying illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants, doomed to be slaves, in the trunk of Ray's Dodge Spirit.

For a little while I thought that this movie was the American equivalent of Ken Loach's It's a Free World (one of the first films I saw last year), for it also shows precarious situations, vulnerable women, and how the poor make money on exploiting the poorer, but it's actually quite different. Ken Loach exposed a general situation, a system of exploitation, through the storyline of a woman, Angie, who was the product of such system. He did it compassionately but the movie was utterly depressing. Angie was not a bad person per se, she was just a human being who mirrored the society in which she lived, the individualistic generation she belonged to. While being a formerly-exploited exploiter, while being a bit greedy to say the truth, while being ready to do anything in regards to morality, she was also vulnerable, because there were much bigger fishes, people higher than her in the chain food, who could crush her any time; she was vulnerable also because she belonged to the weaker gender in a men's world and because she was a mother who had to care for her son first. And it's precisely her vulnerability, the fact that she could be treated badly (beaten even) and was insecure in life, that made her become a ruthless buisness woman who would give herself all the means to have her share of the loot in this Free World.

In Frozen River Courtney Hunt doesn't expose any economic system, she just shows how hard life can be for the outcast (either white or Indian) and how quickly things can go downhill. The husband who deserted his family was a gambler. He deprived wife and sons of the money they desperately needed, because of his addiction.

He was a sinner and kind of forced his wife into criminal activities, if only because he left behind him, with the keys inside, the Dodge Spirit that Lila needed and found after he took a bus to Atlantic City; the car that Ray didn't want to lose; the car that brought the two women together and led them on the river. We're told that young Lila got in trouble with the tribe's chiefs, possibly after she caused her husband's death, and that her mother-in-law stole her newborn baby, hence her living alone in a caravan. Human smuggling is the way she's found to help caring for the child she can't raise, a way to be a mother nonetheless. As she voluntarily crosses the river for the third time, during Christmas night, Ray almost commits the sin of sins. There's punishment yet redemption is possible through sacrifice, miracles happen, and there's still a place for hope beneath the ice. Humanity may overcome...Halleluja.

Frozen River is my first movie of the year. Not many films take place in the harsh, bleak climate of upstate New York, near the Canadian border. I liked the idea of dealing with that border instead of the US-Mexican one for once and I liked the title; the film doesn't only provide a refreshing glimpse into illegal immigration, it also deals with the communities issue, hostility and prejudices natives and whites have for each others. It shows that the Mohawk nation has a real sovereignty it protects fiercely. And it shows the American wilderness, those wide spaces we, Europeans, can't really grasp. Above all I liked the fact that the smuggling happens through a frozen river that turns into an ice desert wherein it's easy to get lost, a true no-man's land(both women are sans homme)– although it's part of the Mohawk Land–because deserts are often the best metaphorical places to tell a journey; I enjoyed the performances of the lead actresses and was touched by Ray and Lila's final interaction (yes I cried). Frozen River is definitely worth watching.

However, I can't help thinking that there's something much more daring and cutting, darker and much more necessary, and eventually stronger, in Ken Loach's not-feel-good movie.