Frozen River/Wendy and Lucy

Academy Award winning actress Marcia Gay Harden (for her role as Lee Krasner in "Pollack") seemed to be passing the baton when she introduced Melissa Leo at a private viewing of " Frozen River" at the Sony Screening Room on Monday evening, declaring that she "loved, loved, loved " this movie when she saw it at Sundance. Even though the movie made its New York debut at New Directors/New Films last spring, and had opened during the summer to rave reviews and robust box office, a diverse crowd including Karen Akers, Tatum O'Neal, Gay Talese, Rory Kennedy, and John Guare celebrated first-time filmmaker Courtney Hunt and what Harden called, "the little movie that could." Not only is Leo's performance one of the most raw I've ever seen---from the first shot of her wiping way tears, her bare feet in the show—but I predict Hunt's direction and tight original script should garner much award recognition. Shot in muddy, economically challenged Plattsburgh, New York, the film's theme is true to its setting: Hunt's family inherited a house there and so, the film reflects the spirit and ambience of this upper  New York state community so close to the Canadian border, the locals obsessed withsmuggling illegal immigrants. From that she fashioned the fiction of two women, one white, the other Indian—mothers-- in an unusual partnership. You cannot take your eyes off Melissa Leo's unadorned face in the film. She did her own makeup, she said, and in fact, you see her applying mascara, that wears off and streaks realistically as her conditions worsen. This is in fact one of the least glamorous roles in a year that is marked by brave roles for women. (See Penelope Cruz become ill in "Elegy.") The same day at a screening of "Wendy and Lucy," a new feature starring Michelle Williams opening at the New York Film Festival and soon to have a run at Film Forum, director Kelly Reichart spoke about the highly unglamorous role she offered Williams fresh out of shooting Todd Haynes' biopic of Bob Dylan. With close ups in almost every frame, Wendy is a young woman who sleeps in her car in this film shot in Oregon "I told her she couldn't wash her hair for 20 days."

Regina Weinreich 

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura