Wendy and Lucy
2008 Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Synopsis
A woman's life is derailed en route to a potentially lucrative summer job. When her car breaks down, and her dog is taken to the pound, the thin fabric of her financial situation comes apart, and she is led through a series of increasingly dire economic decisions.
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I needed to watch the antithesis of Keith Lemon: The Film. It was either this or Cléo de 5 à 7 and with at least two unfinished director watchathons on the go already, I wasn't starting the Agnes Varda box set.
What an amazing film this turned out to be. I'm very grateful to Adam for nominating it and Kelly Reichardt on my female directors list. Otherwise if I'd noticed it at all I would have silently avoided it because of the title. I still kind of wish the characters had different names but when anything is not only this good, but also something you've been looking for for a long long time, perhaps it should matter less - and…
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Wendy and Lucy is one of the most emotionally intense films I've watched. Everything is stripped back to make this a much more real experience than the average film. The music is almost all diegetic, with Wendy's whistled tunes providing a perfectly understated soundtrack and the constant noise of wildlife, machines and traffic makes the absence of a 'real' soundtrack all the more noticeable.
The cinematography is also very understated; the shots are beautiful, but in a way that does nothing to distract the viewer. This absence of distraction means that the viewer has no choice but to watch everything that Wendy does. Michelle Williams is superb as Wendy, a person who one can't help but feel deeply sympathetic for.…
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The road movie occupies an important place in American cinema; going back to the Westerns of yesteryear, movement cross-country in narrative terms has always stood in for progress and the state of the nation. Here we have a film that establishes itself very definitely as a road movie before completely ceasing all movement. It's a moody piece with a complex performance from Michelle Williams, giving us a character with very clear faults but also a muted fragility that makes her extremely interesting to watch. Kelly Reichardt's direction discovers a stilted America, stuck somewhere between here and there with no good clue of where to turn next. It has the grace to reserve judgement and leave its message open to interpretation; this is an engagingly realist tale of loneliness and desperation, hope and conviction.
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Supremely sparse and leisurely paced indie film about a marginalised young woman who finds herself in desperation through circumstance in an unfamiliar location. A headstrong woman who doesn't ask for help and probably wouldn't accept it if offered - Wendy and Lucy seems to anticipate Winter's Bone as a strong film about a young woman who, while exceedingly attractive, isn't glamorised or subject to romantic pursuits with random people and is about an America far removed from the sprawling LA or metropolitan New York - there are so many easy payoffs this film could have tried for if it was a bigger and more expensive Hollywood production, but rather it is true to itself and doesn't hit a single note…
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It is truly unfortunate that Germany will soon outlaw zoophilia and thus deprive Germans of this heartwarmingly sexy film about a woman and her trusty companion.
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The worn-out phrase slice of life has come to accurately describe an inordinate amount of films coming out of the American independent scene lately. From Ballast to Chop Shop, Frozen River to The Wrestler, and here now with Wendy and Lucy, a kind of reductive naturalism has caught fire, resting its gaze upon people and places on the fringe of American society with nary a plot or aesthetic agenda to justify its output. These films are reminiscent in part of their European counterparts, in style the Dogme movement, in spirit the social dramas of Mike Leigh and the Dardennes brothers, but like most things American they feel born anew. Not even Van Sant’s latest works feel akin to this shift,…
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Supremely sparse and leisurely paced indie film about a marginalised young woman who finds herself in desperation through circumstance in an unfamiliar location. A headstrong woman who doesn't ask for help and probably wouldn't accept it if offered - Wendy and Lucy seems to anticipate Winter's Bone as a strong film about a young woman who, while exceedingly attractive, isn't glamorised or subject to romantic pursuits with random people and is about an America far removed from the sprawling LA or metropolitan New York - there are so many easy payoffs this film could have tried for if it was a bigger and more expensive Hollywood production, but rather it is true to itself and doesn't hit a single note…
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"The [R] rating seems to reflect, above all, an impulse to protect children from learning that people are lonely and that life can be hard." -A.O. Scott
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This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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Wendy (played by Michelle Williams) is driving to Alaska with her dog Lucy to make a new start. She has little money, her cart breaks down and needs repairs cannot afford and then she is arrested after trying to steal treats for her dog.
We don't know why life if so hard for her, so we are left knowing little more about Wendy than the strangers she meets. Reading through comments about the film on IMDb is fairly depressing - judgemental film-viewers stand in for many of the strangers Wendy meets in the course of the film and this speaks a volume about the plight of the dispossessed that I think the film is trying to show us. -
What a beautiful movie. Michelle was heartbreaking to watch, I was really invested in her journey. This really moved me.
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It is truly unfortunate that Germany will soon outlaw zoophilia and thus deprive Germans of this heartwarmingly sexy film about a woman and her trusty companion.
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As with Kelly Reichardt's 'Old Joy' and 'Meek's Cutoff' the story on show has very little to do with what the film is about. Relationships, social observation, local history and repressed emotion are all at the core and presented with exceptional simplicity and pace.
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Puedo imaginar que hay mucha gente como Wendy en el mundo, personas sin dinero ni prospectos, luchando por sobrevivir dia a dia. Wendy quiere ir a Alaska (por razones un tanto absurdas) y solo tiene a su perra Lucy como acompañante. Desafortunadamente las cosas van mal para ambas.
"Wendy y Lucy" es un bello drama minimalista que busca retratar un momento en la vida de una joven solitaria. Michelle Williams es estupenda en un rol nada glamoroso (y muy lejos de sus dias en "Dawson's Creek") y la cinta es realista y conmovedora (aunque no pasa mucho). En conclusion es de esas cintas de arte que nos absorben gracias a lo facil que es identificarse con los problemas de la vida cotidiana. -
This indy movie is hard to watch, but Michelle Williams performance is well worth it.
There is not much plot in this movie, it's all about the situation Wendy finds herself in. She's poor, going on a trip to Alaska to find a job. All she has are her car and Lucy, her dog. Unfortunately she loses it all.
She certainly is not very lucky here, but she doesn't dispair and tries to deal with the problem at hand. She finds a kind soul in a security guard, but in the end he cannot do much to help her. Even when he tries, all he gives her is 5 or 10 dollars. I don't know if it's because he's poor…