In Courtney Hunt's "Frozen River," Ray Eddy smokes a cigarette sitting in her beater car, tearful, shaking her bare feet in snow. The camera picks up on a rose tattoo on her left big toe. Red and green, its bloom is full, its color faded, it has seen a lot of life, much like Eddy.

A woman on the edge who has lived hard, she works at Yankee Dollar, where she might become a manger someday, and she learns that her gambling-addicted husband has run out on the family with all the money for their double-wide trailer home.

Actress Melissa Leo, who plays Eddy, arrived on the set that day ready to plunge her bare feet into snow, but not knowing whether the tattoo would work.

She had it done in warmer times: when she was in Arizona working on "The Young Guns" with Josh Brolin and Stephen Baldwin. Everyone got some ink down there, she said.

"I came prepared as an actor, my feet prepared for the part," Leo said. "If the tattoo hadn't been appropriate for Ray, I would have covered it up."

Instead, it became the opening shot, a compelling moment of detailed storytelling that sets the tone for the film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

"Frozen River" opens in Boise with a preview Thursday.

Leo - who is filming "Welcome to the Riley's" with James Gandolfini in New Orleans - and her "Frozen River" co-star Misty Upham will be here, along with Boise-based filmmaker Heather Rae, who produced the film. The three will be at a reception and post-screening question-and-answer session at The Flicks on Thursday.

The film begins its run at the Flicks on Friday. Leo and Upham will stop in for post-screening sessions with Rae on Friday and Saturday.

RARE OPPORTUNITY

It's a small independent film, a first-time effort by screenwriter and director Hunt. It took Sundance by storm, was picked up by Sony Classics, and continues to be a hit with critics, who especially like Leo's taut, reedy performance of the cold-as-ice Eddy who warms up the screen.

The role is a rare opportunity to play "a woman on her own two feet, carrying the weight," Leo said. "I've been playing women for almost 30 years now."

Leo's performance is earning her early Oscar buzz, an admitted high point in a long career marked by strong, visceral performances.

"Isn't that just the sweetest thing you've ever heard?" she asks. "It is society's way of honoring somebody, and how can you not be honored by even the thought of it. I have no crystal balls, but it's a beautiful feeling. It's in my work that I find my existence. That (the work) being recognized, it's better than a wedding."

PLOT POINTS

Just days before Christmas, two women - Eddy, mother of two whose husband left with the family's money, and Lila, a young Mohawk widowed mom whose baby has been taken away by her mother-in-law - turn to smuggling people across the border from Canada to make some money.

To do so they traverse the frozen St. Lawrence River from the Mohawk reservation, which is not under the jurisdiction of local law enforcement, stowing immigrants in the trunk of Eddy's green Dodge Spirit.

"There's no border here," Lila tells Eddy. "This is free trade between nations."

"Ray and Lila find the only way to survive is to work together, against their better judgment, their beliefs, (and) every bone in their body," Leo said from Woodstock, N.Y., where she had been on a panel Sunday at the Woodstock Film Festival.

"The film takes us to a world we haven't seen before in cinema. The writing is so strong, and I knew this was a unique opportunity," said Rae, who met Leo in 2006 at Sundance.

Leo, who had made a short film based on Hunt's story, brought the project to Rae, who signed on within the week. She also took Boise's Laura Mehlhaff and Jorey Sutton with her to work on the project in the arctic climate.

"Frozen River" shifts subtly from character drama to thriller, American Western to social commentary and each strikes the right tone.

The journey the film takes them through, though bleak, has an undercurrent of hopefulness, and there is redemption in the end. Like a darker, contemporary version of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi," it is a Christmas story, though an unconventional one.

Leo likes that comparison, she said.

"I talk about that story ('Gift of the Magi') more than any other story I've ever read," Leo said. "It just comes up all the time and in this film it applies. There is gifting in the movie; humans gifting humans."

Leo began acting at age 4 with Peter Schumann's Bread and Puppet Theater.

She made her television debut as Linda Warner on "All My Children," a part she won over Julia Roberts. In 1993, she was cast as Sgt. Kay Howard on "Homicide: Life on the Streets," a role for which she wore no makeup and insisted that her character wear pants on the job, rather than skirts suggested by the show's creators, she said.

It won her serious critical praise.

Though she has worked constantly, she had to wait until 2003 for Alejandro Gonzlez Inarritu's "21 Grams" to propel her to her next turning point.

That film drew further attention to her ability to create characters with deep emotional resonance and complexity.

She wanted that role, and for the first time in her career, she refused to do a taped audition. She flew herself to meet the director and win the part of Marianne Jordan, the wife of a reformed ex-convict (Benicio Del Toro) who accidentally kills a family with his car.

"I had to show him what I could do with the part," she said.

That film opened the door to this one. On set she met James Shamus, CEO of Focus Features, who introduced her to Hunt.

"It's like one breath after another, going forward," she said. "Filmmaking is a collaborative art, and the process is all part of how it (the film) becomes what it is. How Jackson Pollock threw the paint on the canvas is what makes it a Pollock. And I have learned through this process," she said, then pauses. "I don't know what I've learned. I guess I've learned this is where I am."

Dana Oland: 377-6442