River of Grass

Kelly Reichardt’s debut feature seems at first a far cry from her later films (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff).  For one thing, it’s set in the opposite corner of the country, Florida as opposed to Oregon.  For another, it’s more comic and playful with the form.  There’s dark humor and voiceover and title cards breaking up the “chapters.”  But like the other films (particularly the latter two) it concerns epic drama on a small scale.  Godard famously said “All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.”  Perhaps inspired by that, Reichardt’s film concerns Cozy, a young mother who through a set of poetically coincidental circumstances ends up with the revolver that her detective father has lost, and accidentally shoots at someone with it.  She and her companion Lee — a slacker type — take to the road and embark on a series of almost-crimes in their almost-flee from the law.

What I love about this film, and Reichardt’s work in general, is the smallness of it.  Nothing is overstated.  Cozy’s home life is unsatisfying but not oppressive or harmful.  She’s just feeling some sort of existential ennui, and being a fugitive gives her a sense of identity.  But even this is beautifully underplayed… we don’t see her gleefully revelling in the role or anything like that, yet we understand that this is an escape for her.  The dramatic beats of the plot are all very small, there are no grand gestures until the very end, which is all the more effective for the diminished tones of the narrative preceding it.

It takes a while to get past the amateurish nature of the film.  It looks sloppy, the narration is sometimes overwritten, and most of the secondary performances are poor.  But Lisa Bowman and Larry Fessenden are, after the initial impression wears off, quite good in the leads and have a rather sweet and shabby chemistry together.  There’s a lovely (and again, nicely understated) moment where they pass a joint with their toes.  If you can overlook the roughness of the film, it’s a subtle, engaging look at the lives and aspirations of its characters.  Rating: Good

IMDb