DIGGING FOR JUSTICE

REVIEWED - NORTH COUNTRY: Despite strong performances, North Country emerges as an overly melodramatic take on a landmark US court case, writes Michael Dwyer

It's A man's world down the Minnesota mines of North Country, until a few women, desperate for a reasonably well-paid job and willing to earn their money, join the workforce. One is Josie Aimes (Charlize Theron), who has left her violent husband, taken her two children and moved back in with her parents because her income from a hairdressing salon is so low.

A chance encounter with a family friend named Glory Dodge (Frances McDormand), a truck driver at the nearby iron mine, encourages Josie to apply for work there, with the prospect of earning six times more money every week. "So you want to be a lesbian now?" snarls her father, who has worked all his life at the same mine.

But his response is mild in comparison with some of the other miners, who are depicted as leering, goading primitives who take sadistic pleasure in humiliating the female workers at every opportunity. Their behaviour is disgusting and knows no low when it comes to expressing their resentment towards the women they regard as intruders on their turf.

Some go to such extremes that Josie eventually can't bear any more and she takes the company to court. The film is a fictionalised account inspired by the experiences of Lois Jensen, a miner who, in 1991, took the first US class action lawsuit for sexual harassment.

When the case goes to court, the mining company cynically hires a woman as the lawyer to lead its defence. She deliberately discredits Josie, digging into her past and presenting her as promiscuous because her children are by different fathers. The template is taken from movies celebrating working-class women who dared to take on a male-dominated system - Norma Rae, Erin Brockovich and Silkwood, which is far superior to all of them.

The first US feature from New Zealand director Niki Caro after her international breakthrough with Whale Rider, North Country is evidently sincere in its intentions. It benefits considerably from the skill and commitment of a formidable cast, led by Theron in an affecting, quietly powerful central performance, and from the striking compositions achieved by the gifted cinematographer Chris Menges.

However, the film would have been much more effective had Caro demonstrated more trust in the factual material at her disposal, and in her audience. Everything is spelled out and underlined. Caro makes several heavy-handed references to the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas sexual harassment case playing out on television in the background. And the tone of her film is decidedly uneven as it cross-cuts excessively between Josie's past and present and the courtroom sequences, and between convincing realism and overloaded dramatic contrivances.