San Francisco Independent Film Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

NIA DACOSTA: LITTLE WOODS (2018)



Coming soon (This is not a review)

It recounts a time of crisis (if they've ever had any other, we don't know) in the lives of two recently estranged, now reunited sisters, Ollie (Tessa Thompson) and Deb (Lily James), forced into (or back into) breaking the law to survive. The action takes place in a fictional North Dakota oil boom town. Ollie has been running prescription drugs over the Canadian border. She got in trouble for it, but her probation is about over when she has to return to it to get the money to save their house. She wants Deb, who's unexpectedly pregnant, to have the house while she takes a job out West.

This may indeed be called, as Hoai-Tran Bui does in Slashfilm, "a grim neo-Western that operates like the female response to Hell or High Water." For its focus on women pushed to crime for survival it's also been compared to Debra Granik's miserablist but finely crafted Winter's Bone.

See the Variety review by John DeFore from Tribeca (Apr. 2018), and you will see how favorably most critics reacted to this, Nia LaCosta's feature debut. A story steeped in social consciousness, it clearly pushes all the right buttons. But before comparing this too closely to Winter's Bone, one should consider that film's rich sense of place and original sketching of character. And as for Hell or High Water, with its dashing crooks, wild bank robbing, and suspenseful police track-down, is almost indecently enjoyable. Fun is thin on the ground in Little Woods.

Litle Woods, 105 mins., debuted at Tribeca Apr. 2018, showing in at least ten other festivals. It was screened here as part of SF Indiefest (Jan. 30-Feb. 14, 2019). Coming to theaters April 19.

SF INDIEFEST showtime: Fri, Feb 8 - 7:00 PM Victoria Theatre