Frozen River (2008)

Well it's certainly aptly titled as we head to a northern New York reservation where the Mohawk people live on the border with Quebec. There's precisely no opportunity here, so many of the locals really only subsist from hand to mouth on government handouts. "Ray" (Melissa Leo) has two young children; a hapless, gambling, husband and lives in a dilapidated motor home from which they hope to soon escape. The husband does a bunk though, and that leaves her in the lurch and struggling to pay the bills. At this point, serendipity takes a hand in her life with a chance meeting with "Lila" (Misty Upham). She's also a single parent who is also struggling to make ends meet. Initially, their meeting does not go well - certainly not for the bloodied "Ray" - but their communal needs quickly see them working together to help with some smuggling across the now frozen St. Lawrence River. What are they smuggling? People! That's also adding to the dangers of their illicit operations as the police and immigration authorities know what is going on, and are determined to clamp down. The women have goals in mind to improve their lives, but can their good fortune hold against the cold, the terrain and the authorities relentless pursuit? This is an interestingly bleak character study of families in communities which little hope. These women are trapped in a repetitious cycle that they never have enough money to escape, and here that relentlessness spreads to their offspring - especially the young "T.J." (Charlie McDermott) who is ill-equipped emotionally to adopt the role of "man of the house" whilst his mother is out trying to raise the cash to keep a leaky roof over their heads. There develops quite a poignant chemistry between the two women as their initial hostility becomes something more akin to an inter-dependency and auteur Courtney Hunt does imbue a sense of the hopelessness but also the aspirations of her well portrayed characters. Maybe not the cheeriest of films, but who'd have ever thought Pakistani folks would be entering the USA via Canada across a river of ice?