River of Grass

Born in the backwaters of Florida, the daughter of a homicide detective father and a narcotics agent mother, 31-year-old co-writer and director Reichardt clearly puts a lot of herself into this striking feature debut, which turns the roster of love-on-the-run B-picture clichés right on its head. An unprepossessing 30-year-old with a couple of children and an absent husband, Cozy (Bowman) lives out the dreariest of existences until one night she sneaks out of the house, hooks up with the extremely aimless Lee (Fessenden), and winds up on the lam after the pair think they've shot a local home-owner. With its cast of losers and never-weres, its catalogue of lives in apparent suspension, this down-home drama must be the slackest piece of slacker cinema yet to hit our screens, but the film's crisp framing and even crisper editing signals a sharp intelligence at work behind the camera. What emerges is a wry and telling account of the kind of folks most movies never reach. Watch out for a terrific climactic moment that out-guns Thelma & Louise, listen out for a top soundtrack that makes superb use of the Beach Boys' lulling 'Disney Girls'.