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Screenwriters: Jonathan Raymond, Kelly Reichardt
Starring: Michelle Williams, Wally Dalton, Will Patton, Larry Fessenden, Will Oldham
Running Time: 80 mins
Certificate: 15
Michelle Williams has softly tiptoed onto the Hollywood A-list between an Oscar nomination for Brokeback Mountain in 2006 and a plum role in Martin Scorsese's upcoming thriller Shutter Island. True to form, there's no screaming from the rooftops in Wendy And Lucy either. Instead she turns in a quietly devastating performance as a drifter down on her luck in the Pacific Northwest. This sort of low-key, streamlined approach is also characteristic of indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt who speaks volumes about poverty in the world's richest nation without being preachy.
Getting away from the blonde bombshell image that defined her in TV show Dawson's Creek, Williams sports a dark crop and casual jeans, in a sense making herself invisible. That's apt for Wendy, who lives on the fringes of society. All she's got to cling to in life are her battered old car and her dog Lucy, so when the car breaks down it is a genuine crisis. It happens on the road to Alaska where Wendy, close to broke, is hoping for a new job. But Reichardt doesn't dwell on this. Alaska is not the end of the rainbow and Wendy isn't chasing a dream. She is simply trying to get by.
Her first concern is to feed Lucy, so she ventures into a supermarket in the middle of a sleepy Oregon town and tries her hand at shoplifting. Alas, two cans of dog food end up costing Wendy much more than she anticipates. She is arrested and forced to endure the humiliation first of having to explain herself to the manager, then of being fingerprinted and generally treated like a felon. Throughout this ordeal, Wendy strives to keep her head up and we share in her private desperation because Lucy - who is her emotional crutch - is suddenly out of the frame. When she is eventually released, the dog has vanished and she becomes obsessed with finding her.
Make no mistake, this is no a soppy tale about the enduring friendship between man and dog (or woman and dog). What comes across more powerfully is the sense of alienation and the simple tragedy of a human being whose only meaningful connection to the world comes through her friendship with an animal. It is a dire state of affairs, but Reichardt isn't entirely pessimistic either. Wendy is offered some support by an elderly security guard (Wally Dalton) but his resources are limited as he too is living close to the breadline. That's in contrast to the local mechanic (a typically oily Will Patton) who aims to bleed Wendy dry of her every last penny.
This is a timely fable for our credit-crunched society revealing exactly how money shapes our daily interactions i.e. the less of it that goes around either turns people into enemies or unexpected allies. All this lies just beneath the surface of what is otherwise a surprisingly gripping study of one person under pressure. The film won't change the world, but it is a reflection of it from a rarely seen angle. Instead of a standard plot, it's structured like a rat trap that blocks Wendy's every escape route, and there are moments of real danger too as she is forced to sleep rough. These aren't squeezed in for effect. Everything fits naturally around Williams's performance and Reichardt's sensitive framing keeps the stakes high. Of course it also goes to show that, in the film business, you don't need megabucks to make a big impact.
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