Winter’s Bone – Jennifer Lawrence Shines

Metacritic currently has Winter’s Bone at a whopping 92, with rave reviews from all of the major outlets. ¬†Directed and co-written by Debra Granik, Winter’s Bone becomes the first of two films directed by women to be strong early contenders out of Sundance (The Kids Are All Right being the other).

Kenneth Turan at the LA Times:

Intense, immersive and in control, “Winter’s Bone” has an art house soul inside a B picture body, and that proves to be a potent combination indeed.

High praise for the film’s breakout star, who is being laid out on a silver platter for slobbering men — as an Esquire hottie, and then an interview with Hollywood-Elsewhere’s Jeff Wells where he was so enraptured by her beauty he could hardly make it through the interview. ¬†Such is the way of the world. ¬†Younger actresses simply can no longer be sold on talent alone.

Turan says of Lawrence’s performance, one of the key reasons the film works:

At the top of the list is 18-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, a native of Louisville who faultlessly disappears inside the central role of Ree, a young woman who has more than her share of difficulties even before the plot kicks in. With a mother who is close to catatonic and a father who, like many of his mountain neighbors, cooks methamphetamine for a living, Ree has to be the responsible one in the family, tutoring her two younger siblings in spelling, cooking and marksmanship.

AO Scott of the NY Times:

This is not a story about drugs and family life in a particular region of the United States, even though it displays some impressive local knowledge (much of it derived from Mr. Woodrell’s book). It is more deeply about tribal ties and individual choices, about a stubborn girl’s sense of justice coming into sharp and dangerous conflict with deep and intractable customs.

In Ms. Lawrence’s watchful, precise and quietly heroic performance, Ree is like a modern-day Antigone, making ethical demands that are at once entirely coherent and potentially fatal. After his last arrest, her father, Jessup, put up the family property — including the house where his wife and children live — as bond, and if he does not surrender soon, it will all be taken away.

Even Movieline’s Stephanie Zacharek, who is lukewarm on the film, has yet more praise for Lawrence:

But if Winter’s Bone is stark to the point of being mannered, it’s not completely airless. And in the end, Granik’s compassion for Ree is what rings out most clearly: She recognizes the character’s constrained circumstances without ever pitying her. Lawrence’s performance, impressively quiet and controlled, isn’t the kind that invites pity anyway. When Ree brings one of the family pets, a horse, to a neighbor’s house for safekeeping (the horse hasn’t eaten in a while, and there’s no money to feed it), even her physical stance commands respect: There’s both authority and humility in the way she approaches her neighbor’s house, knowing she needs to ask for that neighbor’s charity. Lawrence shows that for Ree, the moment is less about the family’s bruised pride than about the animal’s well-being

I guess we could say a star is born.