Nia DaCosta's debut is a masterwork of what we might call frontier filmmaking. Though at times Little Woods feels like a graduate thesis, I don't mean that disparagingly. This is a deeply emotional, surprisingly timely tale of sisterhood in an environment utterly hostile to female existence. It reads not unlike a chamber piece in the American northwest, with taut drama and simple thrills carrying us along at a slow but steady pace.
Tessa Thompson takes a masterful turn as Ollie, on probation after being caught illegally crossing the U.S./Canada border; eventually we learn she was probably running drugs, as this opportunity again presents itself to her. As she begins "breaking bad", we might say, we see the intense factors that have influenced her decision and the cruelty of being a lone woman in a man's harsh world. She works odd jobs for local construction men until her sister Deb (Lily James in a no less skilled performance) announces her pregnancy. Ollie and Deb have been estranged-ish since their mother died, and Deb already has a son she can scarcely provide for.
The women face homelessness and destitution from multiple sides. Deb learns how expensive it will be to have a child and so chooses to abort it; the only legal clinic is hundreds of miles away. When she shows up for her illegal operation, the predatory men attack her. Ollie, meanwhile, is threatened by a local drug dealer angry that she's operating on his turf; he demands 30% of her profits or she will need to run drugs across the border for him. As is so often the case in these kinds of stories, circumstances become dire enough that Ollie is forced to work for him again and perform the run.
What is magnificently different about this story, though, -- SPOILER ALERT -- is it's shockingly happy ending. Things get almost unbearably bleak during the movie, and it's hard to imagine this ending well for anyone involved. But Deb escapes her predators and has a safe and legal operation in Canada, Ollie successfully runs the drugs without getting them caught, Ollie learns that she's landed a promising job in Spokane, and the sisters reconcile. The final haunting image of them crossing safely back into the U.S. is incredibly hopeful even as it speaks, ironically, to the border crisis at our southern border with Mexico. Little Woods is a rare gem that uses the structure of well-worn plot but flips it upside-down and repurposes it for a completely novel story that hits a little too close to home.
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