A Sundance hit that is both absorbing and bleak, "Frozen River" is anchored by powerful performances, believable scenarios and excellent writing. It takes viewers to an unnoticed corner of the country and shows what it’s like to actually live there. As Ray Eddy, a desperate single mother of two living in a trailer in Upstate New York, Melissa Leo delivers a tough, utterly mesmerizing performance as a woman whose desperation to do right by her kids sends her on a journey all the more astonishing for being so believable.
Written and directed with uncommon assurance by newcomer Courtney Hunt, "Frozen River" plunges viewers into the bleak, wintry slushscape of working-class life, where people live on the economic edges, scraping for change in the back of a couch to come up with lunch money. Ray and her two boys -- well played by the young actors Charlie McDermott and James Reilly -- eat popcorn for breakfast, but they have a big-screen TV that takes up almost an entire wall of their single-wide. Hunt takes note of such details without judgment; rather, she simply and acutely observes the facts of life in a wildly over-leveraged America.
Similarly, Hunt captures the realities of illegal immigration, not on the southern border, where most such stories are set, but by way of Canada. Without polemic, "Frozen River" touches on a variety of hot- button issues: exploitation of undocumented workers, terrorism, human trafficking, sexual slavery. But "Frozen River" is essentially about the lengths parents will go for their children, as well as what they’ll ask of them.
Made with uncommon skill and assurance, the quietly gripping "Frozen River" never succumbs to rank sentimentality, but it manages to get at the nuances of human relationships. It is rated R and has a running time of 97 minutes.
Images
Date and Time
Sunday Nov 23, 2008 Tuesday Nov 25, 2008
November 23rd at 2pm
November 24th & 25th at 7pm
Location
Smith Opera House82 Seneca StGeneva, NY
Fees/Admission
$5 general admission$3 students & senior citizens
Website
Contact Information
315-781-LIVE (5483) or toll-free 1-866-355-LIVE (5483)
