Interview. Courtney Hunt.

"When I heard that Quentin Tarantino handed the Grand Jury Prize for best feature to Courtney Hunt's Frozen River at this year's Sundance Film Festival, telling the audience that the movie 'put my heart in a vise and proceeded to twist that vise until the last frame,' my jaw went slack," recalls Ella Taylor in the Voice. "But Tarantino was raised by his mom, and if there's one thing this movie gets dead right, it's the desperation of impoverished single mothers trying to fend for their children. And if Frozen River finally gets the terrific actress Melissa Leo her place in the sun to boot, so much the better."

David D'Arcy talks with Hunt about the immigrant smuggling we rarely hear anything about: crossing the US-Canadian border.

Updated through 8/4.

"Frozen River isn't cinematically ambitious or formally adventurous, but it's built around powerful and nuanced performances by Leo, [Misty] Upham and Charlie McDermott," notes Andrew O'Hehir, introducing his interview with Hunt at Salon. "Furthermore, it showcases a confident director who uses her characters to fill out an engaging, well-constructed plot, and you can bet Hollywood execs are paying attention."

For the New York Times, Karen Durbin talks with Leo, who's been working on Veronika Decides to Die, based on Paulo Coelho's novel and also starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Thewlis.

Stephen Saito talks with Hunt, Leo and Upham for IFC.

Earlier: Reviews from Sundance.

Updates: For the New York Observer's Andrew Sarris, Frozen River "plays out as one of the strongest feminist statements I have ever seen onscreen.... Ms Leo and Ms Upham somehow project an aura of indestructibility around Ray and Lila that should prove thematically and spiritually invigorating for adult audiences with a feeling for the heroism of everyday life."

S James Snyder profiles Hunt for the L Magazine.

Updates, 7/31: "British filmmaker Mike Leigh, who has demonstrated some genuine feeling for underclass life (Hard Labour, Secrets and Lies, All or Nothing), told me he once reprimanded an art director who decorated the set of a poor family's home by 'dirtying up' the doorframes," recalls Armond White in the New York Press. "Leigh barked, 'Are your doorframes at home smudged? Then why would these be? These characters have self-respect.' A polite way of describing what's wrong with Frozen River, the new indie film about underclass life, would be to call it Smudged-Doorframe Cinema."

Interviews with Leo: Scott Tobias (AV Club) and Chuck Wilson (LA Weekly).

Updates, 8/1: "In many respects, Frozen River feels like a prototypical Sundance winner: It's plaintive and minor, small in scale and technical ambition, and concerned with issues affecting working mothers, the poor, Native Americans, and immigrants," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "What lends it distinction, if only mildly, are the engrossing particulars of the setting, with its uncommon glimpse into tribal law and reservation life, and Leo's performance, which brings overdue attention to a career spent laboring under the radar."

David Fear in Time Out New York: "That Hunt's thriller can't sustain tension suggests she still needs a few more films under her belt; the fact that Frozen River says the minimum about working-class life (it's hard) or modern Native Americans (they've been screwed) is less forgivable."

"Possibly the best thing about Frozen River is that the mechanics of its busy plot do not intrude awkwardly on the portrait it offers of harsh, pinched lives," writes Richard Schickel in Time. "In the end, you feel that Frozen River gives about as truthful a picture of American bleakness as it's possible for a movie to present. It is a movie that asks something of an audience, but it richly rewards our curiously rapt attention."

"Ms Leo's magnificent portrayal of a woman of indomitable grit and not an iota of self-pity makes Frozen River a compelling study of individual courage," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "She brings the same kind of gravity to the role that Patricia Neal did to Alma Brown in Hud 45 years ago."

"Melissa Leo owns Frozen River," agrees Meghan Keane in the New York Sun.

"At a time when films such as the blockbuster Sex and the City and the upcoming The Women present a female perspective based on consumerism, romance and the romance of consumption, Frozen River is a different kind of women's picture." Mark Olsen talks with Hunt for the Los Angeles Times.

Nathaniel Rogers talks with Leo and Hunt for Tribeca.

Brent Simon has a quick chat with Hunt for Vulture.

Update, 8/3: "With Frozen River, Hunt creates two remarkable roles and a fascinating situation," writes Marcy Dermansky. "With every passage over the frozen river, the relationship between the two women develops, as does our relationship with the characters. The suspense steadily builds."

Update, 8/4: "All in all, Frozen River is gripping stuff," writes David Edelstein in New York. "Except it's also rigged and cheaply manipulative. There's a turn near the end involving a young Pakistani couple - for some reason Ray decides they're terrorists - that's outlandish on every conceivable level. And the ending... Surely Hunt didn't mean to, but her testament to American gumption in the face of crushing poverty ends up affirming that crime pays, social consequences be damned."

Posted by dwhudson at July 30, 2008 4:21 AM