Butler's Cinema Scene

Lily James, Tessa Thompson

“LITTLE WOODS” My rating: B-

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Little Woods,” writer/director Nia DaCosta’s feature debut, unfolds in the barren wastes of North Dakota, where the dull landscape feels like a reflection of its inhabitant’s desperate lives.

Ollie (Tessa Thompson) is living in the house where her mother recently died. On probation after being caught crossing the Canadian border with a backpack full of oxy, she now scratches out a living selling coffee and sandwiches to oil drilling crews.  She also takes in laundry.

Her empathetic probation officer (Lance Reddick) is encouraging (“You’re so close…please stay out of trouble”) but Ollie finds herself being pulled back into the drug trade.

The problem is her adopted sister Deb (Lillie James), a former exotic dancer who lives in an RV with her son Johnny (Charlie Ray Reid).  Deb excels at making dumb choices.

Johnny’s dad, Ian (James Badge Dale), is a well-meaning loser who lives in a sparse motel room.  He can’t support his wife and son; even worse, he’s gotten Deb pregnant again.

Now the bank has come calling to repossess their late mother’s house. Ollie has a week to come up with a $3,000 payment and the only way to do that is to dig up the cache of drugs she buried in the woods and start selling.

The downbeat tale, enhanced immeasurably by Thompson’s thoughtful/heartfelt performance, finds Ollie sucked into yet another mission into Canada planned by her former drug-running boss (Joe Stevens).  She’s to pick up a load of drugs from a Canuck pharmacy and walk them through the woods back to the U.S.

She also brings along Deb and Johnny so that her sister can buy a forged medical card and get an abortion.

Lily James, Charlie Ray Reidx

“Little Woods” draws heavily from two other recent films, Debra Granik’s powerful “Winter’s Bone” and David Mackenzie’s “Hell or High Water.”

“Winter’s Bone,” of course, depicted a young woman struggling to survive on the edges of the Ozark meth industry. “Hell or High Water” was a heist movie that got lots of mileage from its depiction of the plight of working-class Texans.

DaCosta’s film is neither as deep as the former nor as entertaining as the latter (“Hell or High Water” managed to make some serious points while retaining a sense of humor), but it’s eerily evocative of life among America’s new underclass.

Most of Ollie’s oxy-scarfing customers are laborers who’ve gotten hooked trying to relieve the pain of on-the-job injuries. These are characters with no sense of the future…they’re just hanging on day to day.

Despite toying with some of the trappings of a crime film, “Little Woods” pretty much eschews violence (though not the threat of violence) in favor of personality-driven drama.  As first films go, it sets a high standard; it’ll be interesting to see what DaCosta comes up with next.

| Robert W. Butler