Once Upon a River

Finally a movie with actual substance and true life consequences. Wonderfully acted . Wish she would've met back up with the teacher. Maybe a sequel ?

Saw this at the Woodstock Film Festival at its New York Premiere and glad I came out in the rain to see it. The Nature cinematography alone makes it worth the trip to the theater. You feel like you're at the river including the sounds of the outdoors. Music soundtrack is soft and minimal so the sounds of the river can come through. The story is a bit dark as this young girl looks for her mother to escape her cruel reality. Lots of warm moments as she connects with various characters along the way. It makes you care for these people and give hope for Margo's destiny. Her adopted friend Smoke ( John Ashton) steals the scenes and provides sprinkles of humor to lighten the mood.

This was a gorgeous little film that was done, with a tremendous amount of heart. It was well written, very well directed, the soundtrack was good, cinematography was lovely and the entire production held together very well. One could tell it was a low budget film, yet for me it felt very coherent and sincere.

It was a somewhat tragic story yet it felt hopeful. Kenadi DelaCerna was absolutely fantastic as the lead, as we're John Ashton and Tatanka Means. Some really stand out performances. I highly recommend this film, it is a little slow and it does meander a little bit, but in the end I found it to be quite a compelling story. Very true to life and the kind of (non amusement park ride) film Hollywood does not create anymore.

Greetings again from the darkness. Haroula Rose is an extraordinary talent. She's a singer, actor, writer, producer, and director, and she's continuing to prove she's very good at all of the above. This is her first time directing a feature length film, and she also adapted the screenplay from the popular 2011 novel written by Bonnie Jo Campbell. The film has a unique look and feel, yet is so accessible we are drawn in from the stunning opening shots.

Kenadi DelaCerna stars as Margo Crane, a teenage Native American living on the Stark River with her beloved father (Tatanka Means, "Banshee"). Taking place in 1977 rural Michigan, the film shows Margo's father teaching her how to hunt and fish, and honing her sharpshooter eye with a rifle. We learn that a year ago, Margo's mother left a note explaining that she had to "find" herself, though other rumors circulate through the small community. This abandonment is only the first of many unfortunate situations Margo must face. Two of these involve her father's half-brother Cal (Coburn Goss, MAN OF STEEL), a demented, yet powerful man in town - and his two entitled sons. The most tragic event pushes 15 year old Margo to set off down the river by herself (with her "Annie Oakley" biography), in hopes of locating her mother.

At this point, it's tempting to label this a 'coming-of-age' story, and while it is that, it's also much more. Margo's journey finds her crossing paths with Will (Ajuawak Kapashesit), a Native American researching his roots, and Smoke (John Ashton, BEVERLY HILLS COP), a grumpy old codger with emphysema. In the simplest of terms, Margo is a teenage runaway, but there's nothing simple about Margo. Along the way, she's discovering life lessons and finding out what she's really made of. One of the most stunning moments (and there are a few) occurs when Margo tracks down her mother (Lindsay Pulsipher, "True Blood"), and calls her out on the lie she told to "find" herself a shiny new life. When the mother asks Margo, if Cal ever asks about her, I nearly fell out of my chair. That line carries so much weight.

The cinematography from Charlotte Hornsby delivers the breathtaking beauty of nature, as well as the pain and intimacy of the characters. Even the music of Zac Rae follows the travails of Margo as she continues on. We are accustomed to seeing grizzled men living off the land and making their own way, but not teenage girls. The closest comparison I can come up with is Debra Granik's superb 2010 WINTER'S BONE, which introduced many of us to Jennifer Lawrence. Here, it's Kenadi DelaCerna, with her first acting credit, who carries a difficult film. It's fascinating to watch her skin a rabbit and soon after, figure out that sometimes blood has nothing to do with family, and making the best choices can be quite challenging. It's not a fast-moving film, but it's one that will stick with you.

There have been a number of recent films about race relations in America, but the great majority of the have concentrated upon relations between white and black Americans. "Once Upon a River", set in rural Michigan in the late 1970s, reminds us that there can be other forms of racism. The central character, a teenaged girl named Margo Crane, is of mixed white and Native American ancestry. Although she has 75% white blood, her distinctive features set her apart and she is marginalised and treated as "other" by local people, including her own 100% white relatives. Her uncle, a wealthy and influential man in the area, who sees her simply as an "Indian", takes sexual advantage of her, and this leads indirectly to a tragedy in which her father is shot dead. Margo then goes in search of her mother, who walked out on her father several years earlier.

Margo's search takes her through the wilderness, but she is able to cope, having been taught hunting, fishing and survival skills by her father. Along the way she becomes romantically involved with a young Cherokee man from Oklahoma, but this relationship only serves to bring home to her the fact that, although she is not wholly accepted by white society, she does not belong in Native American society either; unlike him, she does not identify with any tribe.

The film does have two fine features. The first is the performance of Kenadi DelaCerna in the leading role. Her Margo is outwardly a quiet, passive girl, but inwardly she has a steely determination arising from a quite justified anger at the way she has been treated. There is another good performance from John Ashton as Smoke, an elderly man who befriends Margo in the course of her journey. The second is the atmospheric photography of the Michigan scenery, which becomes something far more than a mere backdrop to the story. The landscapes through which Margo travels are certainly beautiful, but as photographed here they also have a misty, sombre quality appropriate to her tragedy.

And yet, there seems to be something missing. At only 89 minutes the film is a relatively short one, yet there is a wealth of incident, perhaps too much for so short a running-time, and as a result it seems to meander all over the place like a long and winding river. Moreover, the power built up in the early scenes culminating in the death of Margo's father seems to dissipate as the story progresses, again like a river which rushes downhill in a torrent in its early stages but which slows down to a sedate pace as it approaches the sea. The intended significance of the title is that Margo's journey in search of her mother follows the course of a river, but that title may also be appropriate in a way which the film-makers did not intend. 6/10.