Photo: Oscilloscope Pictures
Wendy and Lucy plays like an 80-minute deleted scene from Into the Wild as we meet Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) and her Golden Labrador, Lucy, in the midst of a cross-country journey. Wendy is heading toward Alaska and her home is her car; how she got into this predicament we never find out. Directed by Kelly Reichardt the film has a curious pace to it and Williams takes an eerily calm approach to Wendy that would have an outsider believe she is in control of her situation just as she is spiraling further and further downward.
Hints of Wendy’s origins are revealed when she calls her brother-in-law back in Indiana and has a brief conversation with him coupled with an accusatory moment with her sister. Wendy’s car has broken down and she and Lucy are stranded in a small Oregon town. Strapped for cash and dealing with a hungry dog, Wendy is caught shoplifting at a local grocery store and spends half-a-day in jail with Lucy tied up back at the store. As luck (or a lack of it) would have it, she returns to the store later that day to find her only friend in the world missing. Stranded and alone, her only sanctuary in the middle of the night after an unexpected run-in with a transient is a gas station bathroom – things can’t get much worse.
Despite my early comparison to Into the Wild, Wendy and Lucy is a unique film as it jumps instantly into the life of Wendy without any background information and limited reasoning as to where she is heading and why she left wherever she was. The only thing the audience is asked to take into consideration is that Wendy seems to be running to something and her partner in it all is her dog. Dog lovers will instantly connect to this story once Lucy goes missing and it is all Wendy can concern herself with, despite a lack of food, money and proper shelter. It speaks to how desperate she is for her one and only companion in this world and it becomes the audience’s connection to the emotional heart of the story.
There are going to be people that leave this film 100% devastated because it truly is a sad story. You get the impression Wendy and Lucy have been traveling together for quite some time and we are entering the story at the first moment of real heartache. I attribute this to the calm nature Wendy seems to have about her even when confronted with some serious situations. Sure she has been sleeping in her car for quite some time, but it had always started in the morning. Now it is broken down, her dog is missing and she has just had to pay the police more money for her fine than it would have cost her for the items she shoplifted in the first place. Times are about to get really tough and we are asked to join in the journey.
This is by no means a pick-me-up film. It’s an actor’s film and it is meant to showcase the ability of Michelle Williams and her increasing ability to avoid all comparisons to her former life as a “Dawson’s Creek” star as well as the talent of yet another talented female director in Kelly Reichardt. Even though I didn’t like Synecdoche, New York Williams was great in that film as well and this serves up a twofer in 2008 for the young actress that only seems to get better and better with each film she makes. Reichardt, on the other hand, is an unknown to me. This could be the start of something great even though she has been making films for 14 years now. Will this be her breakthrough moment?
Wendy and Lucy isn’t exactly a film you will be running around and telling your friends they must go see it, but it is one you can watch and certainly appreciate for the work on screen.
