“Frozen River” really feels like it belongs on last decade’s list, despite its 2008 release date: there just were many indie movies like this released in the last ten years. It is gritty, dark and compelling, feeling more like an early Coen Brothers film than like its fellow indie award winners, which tended to be about hyperverbal white suburbanites and their sexual complications.
The story of two desperate women who live near each other but exist in different universes, “Frozen River” (like #96 “Nobody Knows) absolutely refuses to be sentimental or weepy. Protagonist Melissa Leo has every right to collapse on her couch and feel sorry for herself; her husband has run off the the balloon payment for their new modular, and there’s nothing in the house but popcorn and Tang. And it’s Christmas Eve. Instead, she embarks on a harrowing money-making scheme with the help of Misty Upham, a local resident of the Mohawk reservation who knows people, and how to get money, but needs help, preferably of the White persuasion. Melissa Leo’s performance is one of the best of the decade, and Upham matches her shot for shot.
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