Wendy and Lucy review

Wendy and Lucy isn’t for everyone. People, who enjoy telegraphed plots, need not apply. Instead, let’s observe and let us see. A rarity in films nowadays, ones that are more focused with beats and a sell able product. One of my personal little pastimes I do occasionally is that I go to a crowded place, a mall, or a park and I observe. I watch people, but I also read them. Their mannerisms will tell me about themselves. If they’re happy, sad, bickering with their friend or lover. It’s this observation that I get a better sense of people. Wendy and Lucy is a lot like that, as if Kelly Reichardt was doing what I was doing when she found Wendy (Michelle Williams).

Not much is known about Wendy. We get bits and pieces, very minor, but by observing Wendy in her day to day life that we get a sense of whom she is. Lucy is her dog, perhaps her only friend in the whole world. She’s on a course to Alaska; apparently they need people, as she puts it, and has about $500 to her name that she so diligently counts and recounts. We also get a dose of her family life, from Indiana, it’s apparent that her sister is cold against her. Bad luck seems to come in doses, and for Wendy it does at the most untimely of times. Her car breaks down and while shopping, Lucy goes missing.

We will follow Wendy as she figures out how to find her best friend and to get her car fixed, but Reichardt throws out a streamlined timeline for a more patient, curious approach. Think Gus Van Sant’s experimental films like Elephant or Last Days, but with a little more concentration in moving the film along. It’s one of those films that will either captivate you or make you wish the paint would dry faster.

I was captivated.

Through such a minimalistic approach, we feel this community Wendy is now stuck in (some town in Oregon) and we get a glimpse of what society is like. There’s some interesting observations on people like Wendy and what poverty, or facing it, does to one’s soul. You get the sense she feels unwanted, so she takes the only thing that matters, Lucy, to find a better place. It’s also a topical discussion, a film released just on the verge of our economic recession. A character notices some people as Wendy is sitting by him, saying, “There use to be a mill here, until it closed down. I don’t know what people do now.” That seems like what the film is about, what are times are like now, sadly.

Wendy and Lucy is a brilliant independent film. It seems like we get these films every once in a while. Wendy is so complex, yet simple. Her relationship with Lucy is heartwarming. Wendy is the type of girl I would latch onto when I go observing. She’s so interesting. I’m glad Kelly Reichardt found her.

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