Cinema
River of Grass
Kelly Reichardt · 1994
Synopsis
In a suburb of southern Florida, on the outskirts of Miami, Cozy, a woman in her thirties and mother of two children whom she neglects, dreams of being a dancer or acrobat; her father is a policeman who has lost his gun. Lee, an idler who lives with his grandmother, has found this gun. They meet one evening in a bar, then enter a property to swim in the pool. The owner comes out, a shot goes off, and they flee. They hide in a cheap motel and look for money to leave the region.
Context
Shot on sixteen-millimetre film in Florida, the film returns to the landscape of its director's adolescence, who describes it as a road movie without a road, a love story without love and a crime film without a crime. It borrows from the lovers on the run in a film by Terrence Malick and from those of Godard. Shown at Sundance and Berlin in 1994, it was released in 1995 in a few cinemas; Reichardt made no other feature before 2006. A restoration carried out by Oscilloscope with the archives of the University of California and the Toronto festival, financed in part by subscription, brought it back to view in 2016.
Who it is for
Seventy-six minutes in English, subtitled; a genre film turned on its head, with a dry humour, which requires no preparation.
Prizes and reception
Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and for several Independent Spirit Awards; among the best films of 1995 according to the Boston Globe and Film Comment.
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