River of Grass

If you're poor, Florida is a muddy swamp your feet get sucked into, its geography so far South, so weighed down by humidity, escaping it requires a life turning point. Reichardt is clearly from Florida, because she made a movie about what it could mean to leave Florida and how hard it is to escape its suburban, subtropical limbo. Of course, if you're poor, you're often stuck wherever it is you are, so there's a universal quality to the movie, too. Silly at times, but this resonated with me.

somewhere between BADLANDS and FRAMEUP, which is a wonderful place to be. just like malick, i wish her great sense of humour wasn't largely confined to her debut.

90s indie Badlands.

Reichardt does a version of 'Badlands' for her debut film. Much grittier in style than what has become her well known aesthetic of restraint, but not the worst for it. A simple story but told with much narrative and visual conviction. Fessendon and Donaldson both highly convincing in their portrayal (no Sheen and Spacek, but who is?) of would-be criminals.

This was good throughout, until the utterly daft and disappointing ending.

One hell of a directorial debut. Like Badlands by way of Vernon, Florida. Or a low(er)-rent cousin of Miami Blues.

A film that is so stuck in its early 90s feel that it's kind of painful to watch now. Not in an original way that encapsulates a time period (like her next feature Old Joy does). Still, there's some cool stuff here w/r/t women trapped in a life. Whatever reason it was that she couldn't make a film for a decade, maybe it was good for her.

Reichardt's debut largely seems like an uneven, unpolished, haphazard and tactless mess which mostly misses the mark. Actually the detached yet naturalistic style is classic Reichardt - it just feels totally at odds with this typically bullish American genre, the criminal fugitive road movie. Only in the finale does the tone start to fit - disillusionment with the American dream (and its alternatives) leading Cozy to truth and reality. And better things, and better films.

Kind of a sad version of Badlands. The intertitles made it a bit cheesy, and the whole movie would have fell flat if not for the end, but I still enjoyed it.

I wouldn't want to be too reductive, but in a nutshell I'm thinking more like a slacker anti-Badlands. A bit of a stylistic journey as well, where Reichardt can pick things up and put them down again. All the strands of the story don't link up for while, but she nails it with sophisticated cross-cutting techniques and excellent placement of music throughout. I really liked the lo-fi self-sabotaging demeanour of it.

As much as you want to be on Cozy's side w/r/t her liberation you can't help but feel bad for the kids she's abandoning. Yeah, she kills a guy that is a sleeze bag and even more morally repugnant but so what. An interesting take on 70's american film making but not really my thing any more.

Equal parts homage-to and parody-of Badlands, the central characters even more dimwitted and reckless than Kit and Holly, but without their sense of fatalist grandeur. Set apart as much as anything by Reichardt's already-assured talent as a stylist; its matter-of-fact portrayal of the barren beauty of suburban Florida had to have been a huge influence on The Florida Project, or Amy Seimetz's Sun Don't Shine.

A shabby dime store midlife ennui, an ostensibly melodramatic lovers-on-the-lam story that turns out to be a whole lot of nothing. Malick, Antonioni, and maybe a bit of Bresson by way of Gen X. It might be as trite as that sounds if it were directed by a filmmaker less individual, but Reichardt's minimalist sketches are always something special.

I haven't seen Badlands, so I kept thinking this was like a low-rent version of Bonnie and Clyde, as two down-and-out characters look for a little excitement and then get caught up in some ridiculous events. I loved how Cozy looks like she's aged considerably by the end of the movie. Decent enough debut.

What I love about this film, and Reichardt's work in general, is the smallness of it. Nothing is overstated. The dramatic beats of the plot are all very small, there are no grand gestures until the very end. It takes a while to get past the amateurishness of the film. But Bowman and Fessenden are quite good in the leads and have a rather sweet and shabby chemistry together. If you can overlook the roughness of the film, it's a subtle, engaging look at the lives and aspirations of its characters.

River of Grass estreava há 30 anos no Festival de Sundance. Enquanto via o filme senti uma forte vibe de Wanda da Barbara Loden, então fui procurar no Google se alguém já tinha correlacionado os dois, então encontrei um top 10 da Criterion escolhido pela Kelly Reichardt em que constava o filme da Loden. A gente pode fugir das nossas influências, mas nossas influências não fogem da gente. YTS.

"Are there any alternatives possible?" http://illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2015/12/episode-83-rise-of-kelly-reichardt-1994.html

As someone whose general take on Reichardt has been that she makes nice, small films that are ultimately too simple and unassuming for their own (naturalistic) good, it makes perfect sense that this, her first and easily most outwardly dramatic (relatively speaking) film would be far and away my favorite. It also helps that it essentially takes the basic style of Badlands and doubles down on the flat, deadpan humor in a way that almost seems to bridge Hal Hartley and Harmony Korine.

Solid debut from Reichardt, though quite out of step with her later work. This film has a jumpier, more frenetic quality that is largely dictated by the editing. No doubt the comparisons to Badlands and Breathless are apt, but I also thought of Bresson with the close ups of cash in the register (L'argent), and especially when Lee was practicing picking his own pocket (Pickpocket). In terms of story, Cozy's search for an identity of any kind links it strongly with Reichardt's later work.

Felt like an homage to 70's films--specifically Malick's *Badlands*--more than Reichardt's subsequent films.

Bop editing and sensuous colour progressions. YES.