vernon film society
Bringing the best in world and Canadian film to film lovers of Vernon and the North Okanagan
WENDY AND LUCY
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Cast: Michelle Williams, Walter Dalton, Will Patton, John Robinson
Run Time: 80 minutes
Country: USA
Year: 2008
Language: English
Rating: PG (Coarse Language)
After generating a lot of buzz as an official selection of the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival®, Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy is a modest yet deeply affecting road movie about an idealistic young drifter and her faithful canine companion who live on the fringes of society. The film stars Academy Award®- nominee Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain as Wendy Carroll, an Indiana native who – along with her dog Lucy – has set out for Alaska where she hopes to find gainful employment in a fish cannery. As she travels, Wendy and Lucy offers a delicate and understated portrait of regional American life. Wendy gets as far as Oregon before her wreck of a vehicle breaks down. Already low on cash and with little prospect of being able to fix it, she takes an ill-conceived stab at shoplifting dog food for her lone traveling companion, Lucy. Things go awry, however, when she is caught red-handed by an overly officious stock boy, arrested and slapped with a stiff fine. When she is finally released, she rushes back to the grocery store where she had tied Lucy up outside, only to find that her dog is gone. On her ensuing quest to find Lucy and get her car fixed, Wendy encounters a panorama of strangers, some kinder than others, that help inform the direction not only of her journey, but ultimately of her life.
Reichardt uses a deft and delicate directorial hand to explore Wendy’s struggle for self-sufficiency in difficult circumstances and her unique relationship with her beloved Lucy. Williams works in subtle, understated ways – she is an actor who innately understands the power of silence. While Reichardt spares us the burden of back story, Williams is able to provide us with an inkling that Wendy is running away from something, and hoping for much more. Each scene in Wendy and Lucy moves like a heartbeat – there is never an extraneous moment to muddy the film’s pace. Nor is the story draped in sentimentality. It plays against the most obvious emotions, carefully building to a memorable conclusion suffused with possibility and melancholy.
“This is where the movie excels. In the classic neo-realist tradition, it's scant in plot yet rich in mood and character, offering us a revealing hint here, a poignant glimpse there, with each revelation filtered through Michelle Williams's superbly muted performance, all the more moving for being so restrained.” - Globe and Mail
REVIEWS: www.metacritic.com/film/titles/wendyandlucy
OFFICIAL SITE: www.wendyandlucy.com
