Rating: 
Summary: Hi Line Hits a Soft Spot
Review: Vera (the incredible Rachel leigh Cook) is two years out of high school, drifting in smalltown Montana, when oddball outsider Sam (Ryan Alosio) shows up on her doorstep promising a way out. Winner of the audience award at the Austin Film Festival 1999, and a Sundance selection, Hi-Line takes off from familiar indie- ground and floats over a landscape both fresh and far-off, in the literal and psychological no-man's land between Montana and Canada known as "the hi-line." Exquisite pacing and camera work draws the already lean and muscular storyline taut. Vera learns from Sam that she was adopted, and he agrees to take her on a roadtrip that will open her heart and his. Huddled together in subzero temps in his broken-down car, the poignance of their shared grief circumvents the obvious. This is a gentle, if searing tale, and when Vera finally tracks down her mother, Singing Bird (Tantoo Cardinal), their scene together wraps you up like a child, it is so visceral and honest. Director Judkins savors the lapses of time between words, the dialogue is sparse and jagged like the lay of the land. Scenes drift away and together like snowbanks, in power, meaning and mass. I especially liked the relationship between Vera and Sam, which erupts slowly through layers of subtext... as they reach beyond each other to find themselves. Rare to find a romantic story held together with such grace and honesty. While the ending may for some feel overly nostalgic, say for the days of Billy Wilder and forties "women's films," it left this woman weeping.
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