Movie Review: 'Once Upon a River' Despair in the Form of a Movie

Once Upon a River is as close that movies have come to portraying unending despair outside of holocaust documentaries. The suffering on display in Once Upon a River may be mostly emotional for the protagonist, a teenage half native American girl, but it is so unending and unflinchingly presented, that it falls over viewers like London fog, deep, thick, and unsparing in its consumption of all around it.

Once Upon a River stars Kenadi DelaCerna as Margo, a 15 year old girl living in the woods of Michigan. Margo lives with her recovering alcoholic father, Bernard (Tatanka Means), who got clean after Margo’s mother abruptly left. Since then, Bernard has dedicated himself to teaching Margo how to survive as if prepping her for a post-apocalyptic landscape. Bernard has taught his daughter to hunt and shoot as well as any man twice her age.

Margo is a crack shot, a patient fisherman, and gut and clean animals well enough to make money off of their meat and their carcass. This is all to point out that Margo’s life is not exactly the norm for a typical teenage girl. This also sets the stage for a tragedy helped along by Margo’s inexperience in anything that doesn’t have to do with life as it might have been in the 19th century.

Margo and Bernard have lived next door to the Murray family for as long as Margo can remember. She’s referred to Cal Murray, the father of the Murray family as Uncle Cal most of her life. Thus she is not prepared when Uncle Cal begins to pay her attention in an unseemly fashion. One night, in the midst of a large family gathering, Cal leads Margo to a garage area on the premise of teaching her techniques for cleaning dead deer carcasses. Instead, he takes advantage of her.

The two are caught by one of Cal’s daughters who calls forth her mother, played in a blink and you’ll miss it cameo by Shirley director Josephine Decker. The tumult also grabs Bernard’s attention and he arrives ready to fight Cal. The fracture in the two families is merely the jumping off point. What’s next will lead to Margo leaving on a canoe down the Stark River, an aptly named waterway, with only her rifle, a fishing rod and a notion of an address that may belong to her mother.

Along the way, Margo will encounter men who either consider trying to take advantage of her or end up taking advantage of her sexually. She will meet and stay with a kind stranger who is dying from emphysema, setting the stage for more sadness and death. And she will find her mother, played by Lindsay Pulsipher, and have another sad encounter that hints that mom is also being victimized while being in remarkable denial.

Once Upon a River was co-written and directed by Haroula Rose, a talented scenarist whose background is mostly in movie music. That likely explains why the best moment in the film is a terribly sad yet lively tune crooned by Margo’s new friend, Smoke (John Ashton). From his name, you can safely assume he’s the friend with emphysema. The hoarseness of his voice however, gives him wonderful character when he sings.

As a first effort behind the camera I cannot fault the direction of Once Upon a River. However, I cannot bring myself to fully recommend the movie. I don’t have any issues with sad movies but Once Upon a River is a dire experience. The performances are lovely and carry moments of grace but by the end I could not wait for the film to be over and for the traumas inflicted upon poor Margo to be stopped simply by the movie ending.

The film does not let up and by the end, we have no idea what will happen to Margo. The movie ends on a wholly ambiguous note. Margo appears to be content but we get no hint of her future plans and where we leave the story is yet another bleak imagining. There is a lot that I appreciate about Once Upon a River but there is only so much oppressive, dire, sadness that a moviegoer can take. Once Upon a River is like a Grindhouse version of a Lifetime Movie with emotional trauma standing in for blood and guts.

Once Upon a River opens in Virtual Cinemas on October 2nd.