Winter's Bone

Today, after yoga class, I waited a while for my friend from childhood, Ilene, to call me. She said she would call today. When she didn't, we went to the movie to see a flick at the University--Winter's Bone, a grim film about a mountain matriarchal mafia (something to be said for alliteration!). I was thinking that the place could have been Floyd, the town where Richard is from, in the mountains of SW VA, but it was far uglier, grittier, and poorer than any part of Floyd I had ever seen, so I guess it was elsewhere in the Appalachians--R. suggested Kentucky.
In that film, a 17 year old girl has to take on the responsibility of caring for her young (6 and 8) sister and brother and her mentally ill mother. Her father, a drug pusher who runs meth labs, like all the other men in the community, has disappeared, and so the family will lose its house, which was posted as bond if he did not appear in court. He was dead though, and the girl figured that out, but her effort to get someone to admit it, to show her the bones so she did not lose the house, gets her beaten up and almost killed. This was an ugly ugly world, where 17 was too young to enlist in the army, but not too young to be forced to live in the woods with her young siblings and her mother. No one cared, or if they did, they did the best they could not to show any feelings at all, lest they be vulnerable.
It was quite a performance on the part of the girl who played this character, Ree! I am sure we will be seeing her again.