There have been a number of recent films about race relations in America, but the great majority of the have concentrated upon relations between white and black Americans. "Once Upon a River", set in rural Michigan in the late 1970s, reminds us that there can be other forms of racism. The central character, a teenaged girl named Margo Crane, is of mixed white and Native American ancestry. Although she has 75% white blood, her distinctive features set her apart and she is marginalised and treated as "other" by local people, including her own 100% white relatives. Her uncle, a wealthy and influential man in the area, who sees her simply as an "Indian", takes sexual advantage of her, and this leads indirectly to a tragedy in which her father is shot dead. Margo then goes in search of her mother, who walked out on her father several years earlier.
Margo's search takes her through the wilderness, but she is able to cope, having been taught hunting, fishing and survival skills by her father. Along the way she becomes romantically involved with a young Cherokee man from Oklahoma, but this relationship only serves to bring home to her the fact that, although she is not wholly accepted by white society, she does not belong in Native American society either; unlike him, she does not identify with any tribe.
The film does have two fine features. The first is the performance of Kenadi DelaCerna in the leading role. Her Margo is outwardly a quiet, passive girl, but inwardly she has a steely determination arising from a quite justified anger at the way she has been treated. There is another good performance from John Ashton as Smoke, an elderly man who befriends Margo in the course of her journey. The second is the atmospheric photography of the Michigan scenery, which becomes something far more than a mere backdrop to the story. The landscapes through which Margo travels are certainly beautiful, but as photographed here they also have a misty, sombre quality appropriate to her tragedy.
And yet, there seems to be something missing. At only 89 minutes the film is a relatively short one, yet there is a wealth of incident, perhaps too much for so short a running-time, and as a result it seems to meander all over the place like a long and winding river. Moreover, the power built up in the early scenes culminating in the death of Margo's father seems to dissipate as the story progresses, again like a river which rushes downhill in a torrent in its early stages but which slows down to a sedate pace as it approaches the sea. The intended significance of the title is that Margo's journey in search of her mother follows the course of a river, but that title may also be appropriate in a way which the film-makers did not intend. 6/10.
