Director Report Card: Kelly Reichardt (2008)

3. Wendy and Lucy

While Kelly Reichardt had obviously carved out a respectable niche for herself with her first two features, neither of them made much of a splash outside the world of indie art houses. At least, I'm speaking for myself in this regard. I had never heard of the filmmaker before “Wendy and Lucy,” which strikes me as her most prominent breakthrough. Another collaboration with Larry Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix, it received rapturous reviews. Notably, it gained its star, Michelle Williams, some Oscar buzz. While Williams wouldn't get an actual nomination until she starred in more above-ground biopics, this extra attention did get me to see “Wendy and Lucy.” Which I'm happy about, as it's a fantastic film.

Wendy is a twenty-something drifter and Lucy is her beloved dog, her constant companion. Wendy is homeless and low-on-funds, her crumbling car being her only worldly possession. She is passing through a small Oregon town, on the way to find work in Alaska, when her car breaks down. She attempts to shoplift some food for herself and Lucy. She ends up caught by a nosy employee and spends the morning at the police station. Lucy was tied up outside and, when Wendy returns, her dog is gone. She spends the next two days desperately looking for Lucy, trying to get her car fixed, and trying to survive in a pitiless world.

“Wendy and Lucy” has something that neither “River of Grass” or “Old Joy” did. That's a narrative hook that's going to completely grab anybody who is a pet owner or animal lover. Have you ever had a beloved dog? Then surely you've experienced, or at least entertained, how painful it would be to loose such a darling four-legged friend. So “Wendy and Lucy” immediately grabs, sucking you into the emotional world of its characters. We instantly relate to Wendy's quest to find Lucy. We can't help but gasp and cry as she awakens in the middle of the night, thinking she might have heard her dear friend return to her. Simply put, “Wendy and Lucy” quietly and accurately captures the special bond we feel with our dogs and how heartbreaking it is when that bond is torn asunder.

“Wendy and Lucy” also continues the development of Reichardt's most consistent theme: People stuck in situations, philosophical and physical, that are not so easily escaped. The first shot in “Wendy and Lucy” is of a train pulling into station. This seems to suggest that nobody stays in this town for long. The dialogue supports this, Wendy making repeated references to “just passing through.” Despite the transient nature of this location, she sure is stuck here. Without funds to pay for her car repairs and without a cell phone, she has no easy way to leave. Once Lucy goes missing, Wendy is even more rooted in this place she has no intention of staying in. “Wendy and Lucy” depicts an all-too-familiar world, where inconveniences that might be minor to one person is utterly world-shattering to someone else.

After all, all it takes a string of bad luck to derails someone's life. Throughout the film, Wendy is continually hassled by people simply for the crime of existing where she's not wanted. After sleeping in her car in a parking lot, she's awoken by a security guard and told to move. The haughty, asshole supermarket employee says “the rules apply to everyone equally” when dragging Wendy before his boss for shoplifting. But that isn't true, because some people have it easy and others, like Wendy, suffer at every turn. She can't even use the bathroom in peace as, while changing in a public restroom, someone knocks on the door. Everywhere Wendy goes, someone is waiting to shut her down.

This is an example of something else “Wendy and Lucy” is about. Wendy is broke and looking for work. There's no work in this town, as her security guard friend tells her. Wendy can't afford a night in a hotel room, the repairs needed for her car, or even to buy food for her and Lucy. Early in the film, she encounters a group of other seemingly homeless youths living in the forest. “Wendy and Lucy” bracingly portrays the life many young people have experienced in the last two decades, as the decline of American capitalism has destroyed the middle class, the lack of reliable jobs and the rising cost of everything leaving many either in debt or without any safe shore to cling to.

“Wendy and Lucy” would be the first time I would really notice Michelle Williams as a performer, as I wasn't a “Dawson's Creek” watcher as a kid. Stripped of all her movie star glamour – hard to believe she'd play Marilyn Monroe just a few years later – Williams is heartbreakingly sincere as a young woman with few options. Much of the film is devoted to her face as she stares plaintively into the distance, always on the look-out for the lost Lucy. Yet she says so much with so little, the psychic storm inside – guilt, hopelessness, frustration – showing clearly with just a glance or nod. It's the kind of intuitive performance that signals the arrival of a bright new talent. (I was a bit slow on the pick-up here, as her turn in “Brokeback Mountain” had already earned Williams acclaim and an Oscar nomination by this point.)

Wendy doesn't encounter too much kindness throughout the film. Most people – teens walking along her car at night, the cops, the manager of the supermarket – are utterly ambivalent to her clear suffering. Yet, occasionally, she comes upon the kindness of strangers. The unnamed security guard, played with a folksy wisdom by Walter Dalton, helps her out several times. The woman at the animal shelter is kind to her. Yet even these gestures only mean so much. The guard gifts Wendy some money near the end... And it's all of six bucks. The mechanic, played by Will Patton, gives her a discount... On the deal to junk her car. Everyone in this world is strapped and they give what they can. But it's not much.

Though explicitly set outside of Portland, “Wendy and Lucy's” dead-end town could be any town in America. The locations are sparse, focusing on only a few buildings. The structure the security guard is protecting is an empty building of some sort. Anyone who lives in any one of the thousands of small towns left behind by progress will recognize this quiet form of destitution. Wendy dreams of heading to Alaska, hopeful that gainful employment and stability awaits her there. But what guarantee is there that Alaska will be any better than Oregon? There is a sense of hopelessness in “Wendy and Lucy,” that she hopes to escape one bad situation just to wander into another one. This is life for the poor and luckless in 21st century America.

“Wendy and Lucy's” naturalistic depiction of this all-too-realistic situation makes it a fairly bleak film. Locked inside this movie is a sequence that takes that uneasy feeling to a whole other level. While sleeping in the woods, as a last ditch effort to attract Lucy again, Wendy is accosted by a homeless man. He rambles incoherently at her, his mumbled speech peppered with warnings not to look at her. All Wendy can do is lay still and stare ahead, hoping this clearly unstable and unpredictable man leaves before he hurts her. It's like a mini-horror movie, tense and unsettling, existing in the middle of this lo-fi drama. Rather fittingly, Reichardt cast Larry Fessenden – her old “River of Grass” leading man, weird looking dude, and horror expert – as the fittingly disturbing middle-of-the-night interloper. This was the first hint that Reichardt had the skills to create a successful thriller.

Reichardt's visual sense remains especially well-suited to melancholy and naturalistic stories like this. In “Wendy and Lucy,” she continues to place her characters as distant figures in wide, green landscapes. This only heightens Wendy's isolation, especially once Lucy disappears. The lack of a musical score, Wendy's half-hearted humming being the only consistent soundtrack (save for a throbbing synth piece that plays over the end credits), further emphasizes her loneliness. Reichardt's camera isn't exactly still though. Several times, such as a deeply sad walk through the pond or a sudden pan to the left while Wendy wanders around a building, she beautifully engineers moving shots. These scenes seem to go hand-in-hand with how lost her protagonist feels.

“Wendy and Lucy” is a movie that will probably make you cry, because it has such a keen grip on the grim reality of its setting and you feel so much for its title characters. But no scene will make you cry harder than the end. Wendy finally finds Lucy... She's been adopted by a seemingly well-to-do family, who have a fenced up backyard and a nice house. Wendy makes the deeply difficult decision to leave her closest friend there, where she'll be safe, then risk loosing her on the road again. Jesus, just typing that out makes my eyes water. It's not melodrama or cheap emotional manipulation. It's a heart-breaking climax to everything that came before, to an innocent girl existing in a world that doesn't prioritize poor people like her.

By the way, Lucy is played by Reichardt's own dog, who is also named Lucy and previously appeared in “Old Joy.” I am sure Lucy is a very sweet girl. “Wendy and Lucy” is a film that has a huge emotion affect on me every time I watch it. Granted, I'm a dog person so I'm an easy mark for a story like this. Yet Reichardt so perfectly captures the down-to-earth, everyday struggles with a keen and realistic eye. Combined with Williams' heart-shattering performance and a perfectly stark presentation, you have one of the best independent films of the 2000s. Reichardt's reputation would rightfully skyrocket after this one. Watch it, cry, and then hug your dog afterwards. [Grade: A]