'Frozen River'

Rating:

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

August 1, 2008

Rated R

PLOT A single mom resorts to human smuggling to make ends meet.

CAST Melissa Leo, Misty Upham

LENGTH 1:37

PLAYING AT Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Manhattan

BOTTOM LINE This Sundance prize winner is super-serious and downbeat, but the reward is a revelatory performance from Leo.

You know "Frozen River" won't be lighthearted entertainment from its opening shot, an ominous, monochromatic image of - well, a frozen river. It's a signal from writer-director Courtney Hunt that her characters are treading on thin ice, and that the cracks will soon show.

This somber, wintry film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in January, focuses on Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), a single mother living in the desolate upstate town of Massena, with two kids and a low-paying cashier's job. We never see the father - he's an addict who recently disappeared with the family nest-egg, leaving only his rusting car. But that car will take Ray into a whole new world.

It has a button-release trunk, making it a valuable asset to a local Mohawk Indian girl named Lila (Misty Upham), who occasionally smuggles immigrants through her unpatrolled reservation, across the solid ice of the St. Lawrence River and into Canada. Ray and Lila strike up a thorny relationship - across the barrel of a gun, no less - but soon become partners in crime.

Leo, a veteran actress accustomed to bit parts, essentially carries this film as the tattooed, aging Ray. Her performance is flawless - tough and brittle at once. The movie's relentlessly downcast tone can be exhausting: There's barely a moment of happiness here. Without Leo, "Frozen River" wouldn't be nearly as compelling as it is.