Frozen River is a well-done low-budget film with an overarching theme of two desperate mothers doing what they can to support their families. Premiering at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, it took home the Grand Prize Jury for Dramatic Film and was later nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Actress for Melissa Leo and Best Original Screenplay for Courtney Hunt.
The film is about Ray Eddy, (Melissa Leo), a mother of two who gets involved in a cross-border migrant smuggling operation with Lila Littlewolf, (Misty Upham), a Mohawk widow living on a reservation. The film is set in Maine on the Canada-United States border.
Eddy and Littlewolf go from strangers to friends as the film progresses. While their first encounter is rough, they work together to make money by smuggling illegal immigrants from the Canadian side of a frozen St. Lawrence River to the American side. This is where the film gets its name, and each trip across has you wondering whether they will make it or not.
The writing by Courtney Hunt, who also directed the film, is very well done. She captures the desperation of Eddy as a struggling mother trying to save up for a new home while her husband gambles away their savings. She also writes Littlewolf’s character well, showing a struggling widow trying to take back her son who is being raised by her mother-in-law.
One key moment in the film is when the two women smuggle a Pakistani couple across the river in Eddy’s car. Eddy is suspicious of the couple’s backpack, fearing it contains a bomb. She throws it out of the car but is informed there is a baby inside after dropping the couple off on the American side of the river. After rushing back to retrieve the child, only to find him cold and unresponsive, Eddy and Littlewolf resuscitate the baby and reunite him with his parents.
The climax of the film comes when the women pick up two young Asian girls from a French-speaking pimp. A tense moment arises when the man tries to pay only half the rate, resulting in Eddy pulling her gun on him. After forcing him to pay the other half, he shoots her in the ear. Then while attempting to cross the river, her car gets stuck on a piece of ice, forcing the group to complete the journey on foot, while also trying to avoid the authorities.
Overall, the film’s overarching theme of two desperate mothers doing what they can to support their children is hard to miss. Set on the Mohawk reservation at the U.S.-Canada border, the film explores themes of poverty, survival and moral ambiguity through the lens of two struggling mothers—one white and one Mohawk—who turn to human smuggling out of necessity.
While Eddy is scraping together just enough money to keep the lights on, Littlewolf is saving up for a crib so she can retake custody of her son, who is only a year old. It is a well-done low budget movie that reminds the viewer of how desperate times can result in people taking desperate measures.