VIDEO: Contender Q&A with 'Frozen River' star Melissa Leo

                        

Last month, Melissa Leo, a best actress contender for her performance in "Frozen River" (Sony Pictures Classics, trailer), joined me at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., for another East Coast installment of The Envelope's hallmark Screening Series. (Other guests this year have included Richard Jenkins, Mark Ruffalo, Kate Beckinsale and Alan Alda, with more to come in January.)

"Frozen River" -- a hybrid of the drama, thriller and western genres -- was adapted (from a short film of the same title and starring the same actors that played at the 2004 New York Film Festival) and directed by first-time filmmaker Courtney Hunt. The film was shot in Plattsburgh, N.Y., near the U.S.-Canadian border, over 24 days in February 2007 on a shoestring budget of just $500,000.

It subsequently was accepted into, premiered at and won the Sundance Film Festival in January; opened in select theaters in August and has earned an impressive $2.36 million in assorted art houses from then through now. Among the many accolades that it has received on the festival circuit and from critics groups are several major ones for Leo: She won the Gotham Award for best breakthrough performance, and she has been nominated for the Golden Satellite and SAG Award for best actress.

As you can see for yourself in the video, Leo kept the audience at our event (250 Brandeis students, Boston-area film buffs and locally based SAG and AMPAS members) engaged for the better part of an hour with fascinating and often humorous anecdotes about her life as an actor, which has never been easy.

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If ever there was a career that proved there is more than one road to success in Hollywood, Melissa Leo's is it. Over the last 25 years, she has fearlessly defied rules, norms and expectations, refusing to compromise her own standards and beliefs for anyone or anything.

After getting her start in soap operas and small TV shows in the early '80s, she got her big break in 1993 when she was cast as Detective Kay Howard on the hit television show "Homicide: Life on the Streets." Her portrayal of a female cop who dressed professionally, could hang with the boys and refused to be sexually objectified attracted a cult of fans and paved the way for future TV parts such as Mariska Hargitay's on "Law and Order: SVU," Marg Helgenberger's on "CSI," and Kyra Sedgwick's on "The Closer." Unfortunately, her insistence on playing the character that way also led to her departure from the show.

Not one to stay knocked down, she overcame the challenges of typecasting and fought her way back, giving standout performances in important shows and films such as "21 Grams" (2003) and "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" (2005), either one of which could have earned her an Oscar nomination.

Then, last year, at the age of 47, she was offered the opportunity to star in a film of her own for the first time and, as anyone who has seen "Frozen River" can attest, knocked it out of the park. Just ask Quentin Tarantino, the president of the festival jury at the Sundance Film Festival, who when presenting the film with the festival's highest honor, the Grand Prize, said, "The film that we're giving the Grand Jury prize to blew my ass [expletive]-ing away. ... It took my breath away and then, somewhere around the last hour, it put my heart in a vise and proceeded to twist that vise until the last frame."

To paraphrase Robert Frost, Melissa Leo took the road less traveled by, and that, it now appears, has made all the difference.

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"Frozen River" is the story of Ray Eddy (Leo), a wife and mother of two who lives with her family in a humble trailer near the U.S.-Canadian border. Ray toils long hours each day for little pay as a cashier at a local dollar store, but she has been diligently saving her earnings and is about to realize her personal dream of moving the family into a nicer trailer when her husband, a gambling addict, absconds with their savings. A new home is suddenly the least of her worries -- she must now find some way to provide just the bare necessities -- but she finds that no matter how hard she is willing to work, there is simply no legal way to do so. With her back against the wall -- and with the benefit of having just met another woman (Misty Upham) who is in much the same boat, and who has found one way to circumvent the law -- she reluctantly turns to the alternative method.

In many ways, the movie "Frozen River" is a reincarnation of the TV show "Weeds" (Showtime, 2005-present). I know that may sound strange, because one is a stark drama and the other is a glossy comedy, but think about it: Both are character studies of a strong, stubborn, middle-aged and involuntarily single woman who, upon being thrust into a bad situation, demonstrates just how far a mother will go to provide for her children. Moreover, both are really less about the woman than about the present-day phenomenon she embodies: the devolution of the American dream.

The film, while providing first-class entertainment (just ask Tarantino), touches on a whole retinue of hot-button issues currently impacting the lives of countless average, hard-working Americans like Ray: the challenges of raising children in single-parent families; the inability of even working people to make ends meet; the ongoing housing crisis; prohibitive prices at the gas pump; widespread addiction to gambling; racial and ethnic tensions; and, yes, even illegal immigration, which some blame for many of the aforementioned issues, but without which this country might be unable to function.

It is clear from the first shot of the film that disappointment is nothing new to Ray, but also something that never gets old. For people like her, one disappointment leads to another, so that after a while it becomes nearly impossible to break out of the cycle. And yet, despite everything that befalls her, or that she herself invites, and despite the moments of great sadness that pervade the film, I believe that "Frozen River" ultimately offers a message of hope of a better future -- if not for oneself, then for one's children. That's the single most elemental aspect of the American dream, and it's what Ray Eddy is fighting for.

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Photo: Melissa Leo and Courtney Hunt on the set of "Frozen River." Credit: Sony Pictures Classics

Video: John Quackenbush (Brandeis University)

Special thanks: Rebecca Fisher (Sony Pictures Classics), Amanda Silverman, Lea Cohen, Kate Rosen (42 West)