Currently showing at Gateway's Nouveau theatre is Winter's Bone (2010), the gritty and compelling portrayal of tough-as-nails 17-year-old girl, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) tastefully directed by Debra Granik. As Ree negotiates being the only caretaker of her two young siblings and mentally absent mother, she is shocked to be informed by the local sheriff that her fugitive father, a methamphetamine cook, is to stand trial in one week, and should he not show, their home will be usurped as collateral.
Scouring a landscape of barren rurality for her father, she is met with opposition from everyone she turns to for help; seemingly to all share blood ties, the townsfolk clearly do not want Ree snooping around. With the only assistance coming from her father's embittered, coke-addicted brother, the likelihood of Ree's success is as murky as the persistent forest framing the edges of nearly every scene.
Whilst it is common enough for a stark setting to be used to make emotion more vivid, Winter's Bone soars where many other films of this particular intimacy fail: in being tender without being sentimental; in being frank without being overbearing. The film permeates a potential violence on the cusp of every interaction, masterfully allowing suspense to steadily build upon itself. Winter's Bone won the Best Screenplay and Grand Jury awards at the Sundance Film Festival, and is nominated for a Golden Globe.
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