FROZEN by Juliet McKoen
by Andre Soares
Frozen (2004)
Director: Juliet McKoen. Screenplay: Juliet McKoen and Jayne Steel. Cast: Shirley Henderson, Roshan Seth, Richard Armitage, Jayne Ashbourne, Les Audley, Nick Bagnall, Jamie Sives
BELOW AND BEYOND
The tale of a young fishery worker obsessed with the mysterious disappearance of her older sister, Frozen is a curious mélange of psychological drama and metaphysical mystery-thriller. The end result is a mixed bag. The story, though conceptually intriguing, lacks coherence, and Scottish actress Shirley Henderson is seriously miscast as the borderline-pathological heroine. On the other hand, director Juliet McKoen ably captures the atmosphere of gloom and emptiness of a drab fishing town on Britain’s northwestern coast, while the film’s key revelation, even though it trails several farfetched plot developments, is appropriately surprising and disturbing.
What to do when your sister has disappeared without a trace for more than two years? When police investigations begin to wind down, Kath Swarbrick (Henderson) decides to take matters in her own hands. (See synopsis). A strange glitch on the CCTV footage of Kath’s sister on the day of her disappearance seems to reveal some bizarre clue about the matter — or is it all the work of Kath’s ever more unbalanced mind?
Inspired by a couple of real-life stories — and owing, perhaps, some key plot elements to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 mind-trip Blowup — co-screenwriters McKoen and Jayne Steel have concocted an interesting tale of loss and obsession. Unfortunately, Kath’s desperate search for the truth fails to become fully involving partly because of holes in the narrative that require major suspension of disbelief, and partly because Shirley Henderson is unable to sustain the necessary dramatic intensity her role requires.
Compounding matters, the worst plot hole takes place near the end, when a crucial — and absurdly contrived twist — takes Kath on a life-threatening path. The fact that the ultimate denouément remains effective is a testament both to McKoen’s talent as a director and to the intrinsic qualities of the basic storyline. A little more care with the logical setup of the preceding sequences would have turned Frozen into a considerably more profound experience.
An undue emphasis on the CCTV footage, which is played ad nauseam throughout the film, is another distraction. The scenes showing the video footage of the missing girl, although important as an indication of Kath’s neuroses and of the video’s chief role in the story, at times seem like a gimmick — whenever in doubt about how to proceed with the plot, show the same video footage one more time. Instead, the screenwriters should have devoted more time to developing the relationship between Kath and her clergyman counselor (played by Roshan Seth) and to providing us with a better understanding of both the friendly dockland security manager (Richard Armitage), who may have something to hide, and the lowbred Jim (Jamie Sives), the former fiancé of Kath’s sister.
Henderson, for her part, has to carry the film on her own. She valiantly tries to accomplish that task, but is ultimately unable to fully convey Kath’s sense of loss and despair, resorting instead to poor-little-girl looks and exclamations that, coming from an actress in her late 30s, feel coy rather than endearing. (She did, however, win best actress honors at the Marrakech Film Festival and at the Bafta Scotland ceremony.)
Yet, despite its shortcomings, Frozen has good qualities that must be acknowledged. Besides the story’s intriguing setup, McKoen’s desolate fishing village (shot at and near Morecambe Bay) feels and looks real, and Richard Armitage displays a solid screen presence as the friendly but cautious security manager. Additionally, Frozen offers a series of starkly beautiful images captured by Philip Robertson’s lenses (working with high definition digital equipment). Those are crucial in enhancing the quasi-ghostly mood of the story and characters, especially in the series of sequences at the film’s haunting finale.
Reviewed at the AFI FEST.
Kath Swarbrick (Shirley Henderson) is haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her older sister Annie. Two years have passed, and as police investigations wind down, Kath becomes ever more obsessed in trying to find out the truth.
She steals some CCTV footage of her sister on the day of her disappearance, and decides to visit the spot in a dockland alley where Annie had been recorded. Staring transfixed at the camera above her, Kath has visions of a boatman, an inlet, and a young woman walking on the other side of the bank. Kath becomes convinced that she has found a gateway to another dimension where Annie is still alive. Kath also senses that a glitch on the video footage is actually a clue about Annie’s mysterious disappearance. Steven (Richard Armitage), Fleetwood docks security manager, dismisses Kath’s claims as mere wishful thinking.
Some around Kath question her sanity, while a kindly parish priest, Noyen Roy (Roshan Seth), tries to help the distraught woman maintain her fragile grip on reality. During the process, Noyen develops more than fatherly feelings for Kath. Ultimately, reality turns out to be considerably more complex and more frightening than either Kath or Noyen expected.
Notes:
"A disappearance, unlike a death, frustrates and tantalizes because of its lack of closure. The missing person becomes a creation of memory and imagination, both outside time and time’s victim. There is never a chance to definitively mourn.” Jason Cowley, Unknown Pleasures, as quoted on the Frozen website.
Frozen is the feature-film début of writer/director Juliet McKoen. The story was partly inspired by Marion Partington’s article "Salvaging the Sacred," in which the author discusses the emotional void left by the disappearance of her sister, and by the discovery of a woman’s body in a lake near McKoen’s home in Cumbria.
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