River of Grass

“RIVER OF GRASS is a road movie without the road, a love story without the love, and a crime story without the crime,” said director Kelly Reichardt about her debut. The film touches on a theme that would continue to return in the rest of her work: people who try to leave a hopeless place, but lack the means to do so successfully. “I guess it’s just a good setup for different kinds of searching: question-asking, looking for the next place to go, what are you looking for, what are you leaving behind. All those things are good for grounding it in getting from point A to point B.”

In RIVER OF GRASS the dissatisfied housewife Cozy is stuck in a dead-end existence and she feels no emotional connection to her children, whom she mostly ignores. She spends her days fantasising about a different life. One day, she meets Lee in a bar. A drink together leads to a home break-in, which leads to a gun being shot, sending them on the run together, thinking they’ve committed murder.

Reichardts debut takes the audience back to the setting of her youth, the suburbs of Southern Florida, the Everglades, also known as the ‘River of Grass’. Reichardt filmed RIVER OF GRASS on 16mm and immediately shows that she has been developing her own distinct voice and style from the very beginning of her career.

During the popular podcast The Movies That Made Me actress and director Kristen Stewart – who worked with Reichardt in CERTAIN WOMEN (2016) – names RIVER OF GRASS as one of the nine movies that influenced her. RIVER OF GRASS is the auteur film that represents the raw, independent cinema that Stewart wants to create herself.