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JENNIFER LAWRENCE IN WINTER'S BONE

In search of a wayward father

Granik's similarly titled first film Down to the Bone, made in 2004 (when it won a Sundance directing award) but shown in New York in 2005, was an intriguingly gritty and gray story about a woman, her men, and her drug addiction and recovery. Drugs figure again this time but the scene moves from Upstate New York to the Missouri Ozarks and the focus, in this second feature based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell, now is on a 17-year-girl whose father, like many in the area, cooks up speed. Fresh-faced and clean living, Ree needs not rehab but the secret of her wayward father's whereabouts. He's gotten released on bail, Ree (Jennifer Lawrence), the girl, learns from the sheriff (Garret Dillahunt), and he put up their homestead to do so. If he doesn't show up for his trial, the property will be forfeited to a bail bond company and Ree and the little family she alone cares for, her near-catatonic mother and her younger brother and sister, will have no place to live.

What follows is an exploration of the surroundings, a motley landscape of junk heaps and shacks where people live or make drugs. Winter's Bone is marked by rich local atmosphere and flavorful characters who blend into it. Granik again shows skill with her actors and gets kids to be disarmingly and delightfully real.

Ree is like a private investigator now in some Ozark film noir, except though she has a couple of shotguns she gives her young siblings "survival training" on using, she can't even borrow a car and must trudge around the hills on foot, and getting scant results from asking questions. A kind of omertà prevails among these sinister descendants of moonshiners who've switched to meth. Everybody knows everybody else, but nobody's very trusting. Even Ree's uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes) tells Ree to get lost and forget her quest, and others she queries are successively more and more hostile and threatening. Merab (Dale Dickey), a gnarly gatekeeper for some uncooperative relatives, goes beyond threatening and eventually resorts to violence against Ree. Like many a noir detective before her, Ree winds up with a bloody face.

Eventually things get worked out through a grisly revelation, and both Teardrop and Merab turn out to be friendlier than they had seemed.

Winter's Bones is rooted in a fascinating and believable world, which it absorbs us into without calling attention to itself; ideally we forget we're even watching a movie. Its action and milieu resemble those of another Sundance winner, Frozen River, but this is more convincing and less preachy. It also reminds one of Lance Hammer's Mississippi family tale Ballast -- but the shift is from southern blacks to southern whites. Winter's Bone may owe something to the films of David Gordon Green, but it's less self-conscious or willfully idiosyncratic. Granik has a way of keeping things simple. You come away with a strong impression of place, and of the protagonist. The focus in on the closely linked and close-lipped locals, their faces and clothes and pungent language of a piece with their hardscrabble living quarters, and on young Ree's simple courage and determination. Jennifer Lawrence has given us a new kind of heroine, her works and actions flowing from her as naturally as a Blue Grass song -- and there is one sung at a party right in the middle of the film. Her hopefulness and youthful energy keep the film, despite its milieu of poverty and meanness, from ever falling into the kind of miserablism that hovers over Frozen River.

On the big screen, the film looks rich and beautiful. Even though cinematographer Michael McDonough largely adheres to a generally low-keyed palate, in the sunlight warm colors bloom in the children's faces and Ree's blond hair.

This is a winner, and one hopes it will get better distribution and hence a bigger audience than Granik's first film. Recipient of Sundance's Grand Jury prize as well as the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival 2010 -- where it won the Audience Award. It is to have a June 11, 2010 US theatrical release from Roadside Attractions, rolling out to various cities and states through June, July, and August. Release schedule. Official US theatrical trailer.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.