winter's bone (debra granik, 2010)

Slice of life, Ozark meth version, with a stoic teenage girl for a heroine. Unrelenting, and I wonder if the people who would make a good audience for this film might be scared away because it sounds too depressing. But there’s a narrative going on which provides thrust, and which helpfully makes Winter’s Bone more than a character study. Whatever else you can say about the movie, it is not boring. At times it’s a bit too close to being an anthropological study, but director Debra Granik trusts her characters and for the most part avoids condescension.