As we approach yet another cinematic Summer of Our Discontent, wherein we will be inclined to listen wearily to grown men discuss tent poles, receipts, and whether or not Catalog Model Number Five makes for an effective Captain Kirk, there is no small relief in knowing that, occasionally, we are granted a respite from these months of mediocrity. It comes in the form of a quiet, spare film about a young woman who has lost her dog, and is one of the finest films to be released in the last year.
Director Kelly Reichardt‘s previous film, Old Joy, which starred indie hillbilly Will Oldham, had a loose, almost improvisational feel to it as it embraced a sort of stillness in mood and emotion that, to some, made it feel almost inert. Wendy and Lucy shares some of those qualities, but is elevated beyond what could have easily been standard indie fare by a wonderful performance by Michelle Williams, who has quietly shown herself to be a very talented actress when given the opportunity. It is Williams, and to a lesser degree her two prominent co-stars, character actor Wally Dalton and newcomer Lucy the Dog, who instill in the film a decidedly naturalistic tone, sparing us all the usual emoting or actorly histrionics that tend to drag down films of this type, whether it be the indier-than-thou ‘mumblecore’ of Joe Swanberg, or even some of Gus Van Sant‘s tidier messes.
Williams stars as Wendy, a young woman whom we first encounter walking through the woods in Oregon with her beloved dog, Lucy. In these woods, she comes across a group of travelers gathered around a bonfire. A mixture of runaways and roustabouts, it is in her nervous conversations with them where we learn what little of Wendy’s life that we will ever learn: she is alone, and traveling to Alaska from her home in Indiana. Why, we don’t know. We can assume that something has gone awry in her life, but the explicitness in which we are not told this is what makes this film so special. It would only detract from the story, and color our impressions of her before the film has even gotten underway. It is an overriding theme to the story that tragedies can take any form, no matter how small.
We do know that she is sleeping in her car as she travels, and when a security guard in the Walgreen’s parking lot rouses her, her troubles take shape. The guard, played in a kindly performance by Dalton, helps her push her car out of the lot, and when she tries to drive away Wendy discovers that it won’t start. The nearest garage is closed, so she must get through another day unsure of what lays ahead. Careful not to spend too much of the few hundred dollars she has, she goes to a nearby grocery store to get some food for Lucy, who she ties up outside of the store. She gets caught shoplifting, and is taken away by the police, stranding Lucy on her leash. When she finally gets out, after paying a fine, she returns to the store to find her dog has vanished. Distraught, she spends the rest of the movie trying to find her.
While much of this may seem very slight, and I suppose that it is, the marvel of the film is the character studies that it offers us. Williams gives such a controlled performance as Wendy, a young woman whose expression rarely changes even as things get more and more upsetting, that when she does break down, even briefly, it is all the more affecting. It is written all the time about characters that are ‘just like us’, but here, that trope proves true, as Wendy could be just anybody you see walking down the street, a rucksack over her shoulder, being led by a dog on a leash. Her problems are not extraordinary, and her tragedies not unfamiliar; but it is the situation in which they occur, when she needs so little to go right to get by, that when a broken-down car or a lost dog do happen, it can feel much more heartbreaking than any of the usual storytelling clichés you would logically expect in a film like this. There are no stalkers in the woods; she isn’t forced to degrade herself to get by. People help when they can, but they can only do so much. She doesn’t expect anything else, and neither should we. This is how the world works.
Reichardt has proven to be a director of rare abilities. Not only a student of film, but a teacher (she is an instructor at Bard College in Oregon), Reichardt uses the sort of long tracking shots, extended takes, unsparing close-ups and quiet, uncluttered sound (the only ‘soundtrack’ is of Wendy occasionally humming a few bars of a tune to herself) that was once the hallmark of the best directors but is so rare now that it actually seems new again. More than anyone, her films remind me of the best work of Monte Hellman, a wonderful director whose work in the 1970′s included two films that seem to be a blueprint for this: Cockfighter and Two Lane Blacktop. Both quiet, at times almost silent, works, which featured the great Warren Oates, these films also dealt with people who were drifting across the U.S. for reasons we, and likely they, were never certain. While some people may, and undoubtedly will, complain that this movie isn’t ‘about anything’, they are, and will forever remain, wrong. There are innumerable stories being told in Wendy and Lucy. You just have to know how to look for them. – [DVD]
Drama
Rated R
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