Directed By: Eric Mandelbaum
Written By: Michael Graff, Michael Caughill
Grade: C
Winter of Frozen Dreams is an independent thriller based on the dramatized novel of the same name. In the 1970s, Barbara Hoffman was charged with 1st degree murder. Her trial was the first murder trial to be televised nationally. Winter of Frozen Dreams is more of a character study then a suspenseful film. The characters are somewhat interesting, but most of them, even Hoffman, weren’t gone in to nearly enough to create an intriguing draw or questioning of the true character and capacity for selfishness and caring, love and murder, and intelligence and conniving that it is suggested that Hoffman must have possessed.
Barbara Hoffman (Birch) left college where she was studying biochemistry and became a prostitute, opting for easy money over the career she was headed for. She gained her elderly boyfriend’s property and entire life savings before they were even married. When he turns up dead, she is the top suspect. His body was frozen over and found inside of her bathroom. She calls her current quiet and slightly socially awkward boyfriend, Jerry (Sexton III), in a panic. She claims her pimp killed this man for whatever reason and put him in her bathroom to show the other girls a lesson about not taking a stand against him; to keep them in their place. Jerry believes her, but also thinks that they should call the police. Barbara insists that they can’t do that as it will look like she had something to do with this. She insists that if they just get rid of the body than this will go away and it will show her pimp that he can’t mess with girls like her.
Before long, the body is found and Jerry is taken in for questioning. He tells them what happened, convinced that he is really protecting Barbara from being further suspected as he is sure that she is innocent. Agents begin following him around, for his protection as they fear that Jerry will be her next target. Things get rocky between Jerry and Barbara and she becomes more uneasy that these agents are constantly following them. Barbara realizes that Jerry could be what puts her away, but without him the police would only have circumstantial evidence. Questions are posed of whether or not his good intentions will ruin Barbara’s life, if she truly is guilty or just a pimp’s victim, and what she is capable of doing to look out for herself.
Thora Birch does well as the cold and selfish, Barbara Hoffman. There is still supposed to be a question of whether she is guilty or even capable of murder or not. She plays the game very well, looking out for herself, while still seeming like she might care for boyfriend and is simply looking for a way out of her life of prostitution. Brendan Sexton III did well as Jerry, displaying such an innocent naïve quality that perhaps made him the biggest victim of all. He wanted to believe in Barbara so badly, to believe that he really did have a good girl that he could spend the rest of his life with who liked him for who he was. This desperation to believe this is overwhelming, making him a very sympathetic character, his only crime being that he was too understanding. Keith Carradine also does good as always as a retiring cop, wanting to end his career on a high note by putting Barbara behind bars. Dean Winters also did pretty good as Ray, Barbara’s pimp. He established power, dominance, greed and belittled his girls when he could. Still, it was less overdone than you might expect, seeming natural and giving us a realistic character.
The first mistake the film makes is in the very first scene when they reveal that Barbara was found guilty for first degree murder. The rest of the movie seems to question whether she did commit murderer or not, but there really isn’t much question left at this point. Perhaps, the writers figured since it was a known crime case that there wasn’t any point in leaving the question of the verdict up in the air. Since this happened 30 years ago, it is safe to assume that majority of people who watch the film probably wouldn’t be familiar enough with the case to know whether she was found innocent or guilty. Barbara Hoffman has refused to talk since she was found guilty so the only evidence was the testimony given and that she was found guilty. The rest is just speculation, diving in to the events that led up to her arrest. Through this we get the two opposing sides to her character there would be a lot more suspense, build up, and satisfaction if we were able to go in with a clean slate, accepting Barbara as our protagonist and wanting to believe in her.
The non-chronological structure of the film could have worked, offering us little pieces of the puzzle in to Barbara’s existence. It really feels like what we are given is only scratching the surface though. Being up close, viewing so many moments that surrounded the murders and her arrest, we should have been able to see so much more of both sides of Barbara; the seemingly good as well as the selfishly bad. She is supposed to be a genius and all we see of that side of her is possible gold digger tendencies, which any girl with looks and a little bit of charm can pull off. I guess they wanted to leave it open, making it possible that Barbara could be either innocent or guilty. It would have been a much more compelling film if they would have really dove in to her character, displaying her extremely contradicting nature on the outside as well as the even darker and more self-serving side of her that she kept hidden in the inside.
Winter of Frozen Dreams is a decent film following the events that led up to Barbara Hoffman’s murder conviction and the questioning of whether she really was guilty and capable of committing this crime. Still it could have been a far more intriguing and involved film if the writers wouldn’t have hesitated to truly explore the interesting characters they had to work with. It seems like they wanted it to be a captivating character piece, but were too afraid to take a stance on the characters, wanting to leave everything up in the air. The problem is when you are just warily shown a bit of everything that’s on the surface the real value is lost.
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Good review, but ... 50 or so is "elderly"??