Review: ‘Little Woods’ big on compelling plot, characters
Writer-director Nia DaCosta’s “Little Woods” is the story of women trying to keep themselves and their families afloat in a world where the good and reliable men have been culled by the opioid crisis, the destruction of the middle class and an epidemic of chronic immaturity.
In some ways, the film is the “Thelma & Louise” of female misery.
Oleander “Ollie” (Tessa Thompson) is a former drug addict and dealer who is having her last few meetings with Probation Officer Carter (Lance Reddick). She is up for a job in faraway Spokane and according to Carter is ”so close” to putting the life of drugs behind her. Her adoptive sister Deb (Englishwoman Lily James) has troubles of her own. Another recovering addict, Deb is a single mother living in an RV in a parking lot, and she is pregnant and cannot afford financially or emotionally to care for another child. Ollie still lives in their late mother’s house, but if she does not come up with some cash in one week she is going to get evicted. She wants to go to Spokane and leave the house for Deb and her young son Johnny (Charlie Ray Reid), Ollie’s nephew, to live in.
Yes, this is one of those stories about a person trying to get out of a life of crime, but being “pulled back in” by circumstances beyond her control. But the somewhat familiar miserabilist plot and downtrodden characters in “Little Woods,” which is the name of the place where Ollie, Deb and Johnny live (although the story is set near the Canadian border, “Little Woods” was shot in Texas), do not tell the whole story. Ollie has a chance to make enough money to save the house if she transports drugs from Canada to the U.S. one last time for a dealer (Luke Kirby). Deb can end her pregnancy on the same trip with fake I.D. In the world created by DaCosta, men are either drug dealers, deadbeat dads or cops looking to lock women up for trying to survive.
It’s a real-life “Handmaid’s Tale” in many ways, and that economic and gender-conflict grimness goes a long way toward giving “Little Woods” more cred than most films, even independent films, out there. Lensing by Matt Mitchell makes the skies look like they are pressing down on the already burdened people in the film.
Thompson, who also served as an executive producer, is convincing as a young woman who has learned to hide her beauty behind a mask of drab toughness. The truth is Ollie is tough and capable and could probably run the oil rigs where she sells coffee and delivers laundry. As a rigger/dealer who doesn’t like it when Ollie invades his territory, Canadian actor Kirby gives a working-class villain a perversely handsome face. As Johnny’s no-good father Ian, James Badge Dale turns a potential cliche into a complex and even sympathetic loser.
“Little Woods” is a sufficiently impressive achievement to make DaCosta the recently hired director of the upcoming “Candyman” reboot written and produced by Jordan Peele. “Little Woods” just got big.