It’s fitting that River of Grass comes to an end amidst the slow crawl of freeway traffic. The debut film of Kelly Reichardt (Meek’s Cutoff, Certain Women), River of Grass centers on a young wife and mother stuck in a listless domestic life on the edges of the Florida Everglades. The childlike Cozy (Lisa Bowman) passes the time doing cartwheels and keeping a vague eye on her two little kids, confessing in a dazed voiceover that she daydreams about a nice couple showing up to take them away. At a bar one night she meets Lee (Larry Fessenden), whose life is also heading nowhere. Together—and with a gun that Lee has stumbled upon—they head nowhere good. What follows is something of a muted deconstruction of the Bonnie-and-Clyde narrative, though River of Grass is also sympathetic to the escapist appeal that a romantic crime spree would have to someone like Cozy (there’s a montage of her flipping through album covers of confident, in-control women). The acting and filmmaking is a bit rough around the edges—especially during the efforts to involve Cozy’s dad (Dick Russell), who used to be a jazz drummer but is now a cop—yet there’s something mesmerizing about the way Reichardt’s camera aligns itself with the maddening, mesmerizing Cozy, especially when she’s swaying to the sound of a record or balancing atop a concrete wall. Cozy wants out of her flat Florida life; she just can’t imagine heading anywhere that isn’t a doomed American myth.
