WENDY AND LUCY
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Produced by Neil Kopp, Anish Savjani & Larry Fessenden
Written by Reichardt & Jon Raymond, based on Raymond’s short story “Train Choir”
Released by Oscilloscope Laboratories
USA. 79 min. Not Rated
With Michelle Williams, Will Patton, John Robinson, Will Oldham, Walter Dalton & Larry Fessenden
 

What a difference a decade can make. Ten years ago, Michelle Williams was pouting her way through Dawson’s Creak and co-starring in the forgettable sequel Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. Now, after paying her dues by capably fleshing out supporting roles in independent-minded films like Brokeback Mountain, The Hawk is Dying, and I’m Not There, Williams—in an unabashedly minor movie—proves herself to be a major actress. She can wind down the year knowing that her patiently managed career—one that has increasingly favored artistic integrity over a paycheck—is paying off. 

When I call Wendy and Lucy minor, I mean it in the best way possible. Director/co-writer Kelly Reichardt, already touted as an auteur by some critics after only three features in over 10 years, puts her minimalist impulses to effective use in this deceivingly simple story of Wendy, a newly homeless woman traveling from Indiana to Alaska to begin a new life with Lucy, her dog and companion. When her dilapidated Honda Accord finally craps out in Oregon, the cash-strapped Wendy’s already steep hill starts to look like a mountain. She powers onward, but when Wendy’s decision to shoplift dog food leads to a trip in the back of a police cruiser and separates her from Lucy, the mountain looks like it just may be insurmountable.

With a bare-bones script, reliance on natural light, sparse music, and an observant, unhurried eye for the unexpected details that give so much depth to the landscapes both of small-town Oregon and the human face, Reichardt tells her story beautifully. But she couldn’t have done it without Williams. There’s little exposition explaining Wendy’s slide into homelessness and eagerness to relocate to Alaska (a refreshing decision after Sean Penn’s reality-twisting backstory of Into the Wild, based on Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction account of another youthfully idealistic odyssey to the Last Frontier State). Yet Williams shapes a character at once hopeful and hopeless, strong enough to move forward but intelligent enough to discern the gravity of her circumstances. In these economic times, it’s an especially painful performance, emphasizing the inherent tragedy when someone’s life hinges on the last crumpled-up rectangles of green paper left in the wallet. Patrick Wood
December 10, 2008