Wendy and Lucy (2008)

Just so...so bad

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Dear Kelly Reichardt,escapism is obviously not your forte. Wendy and Lucy, one of the surprisingly few films to come out of America about life during a recession, is a road movie lacking in any sort of excitement or shots of beautiful American highways. A broke woman (played by an almost anorexic Michelle Williams) is driving across the US to report for a job in another state. But her car breaks down and she loses her dog. Her unromantic struggle where there is no adventure but only an endless, tiring and boring fight against her own poverty and the cold-blooded systems in place forms much of the movie.There are hardly any people in the American small towns through which the woman drives. It is almost like a dead urban wasteland. The only queues are for people lining up to sell old bottles. That's how badly things have deteriorated. It is no wonder that crooked politicians want to bring in more people into Western nations in the form of immigrants.The film is completely devoid of any sort of narrative punctuation or shock value. So you would not find the woman seducing horny men or her indulging in hard drinking. Survival in the urban wasteland is boring. The bleak and rather dour visuals paint a picture of small town American suburbs as if a plague has descended upon them. Michelle Williams as the emotionally jaded and physically fragile young American woman fits the visuals and surroundings perfectly. Her relentless search for her dog in the face of ignorance and cruelty from the people around her tells a lot about the state of human relations in the modern world. Anyway, I like films with more escapism. I would have made this film differently. There isn't much wrong with your film I guess. But I am just a very subjective guy. I will check out more films by you, Kelly.Best Regards, Pimpin.(5.5/10)

Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) is driving to Alaska with limited cash and her dog Lucy. Her car breaks down. She tries to steal some dog food and gets caught. She had tied Lucy up in front of the grocery store. When she returns from getting arrested, Lucy is gone. There is a friendly security guard. Lucy isn't at the pound. Bill the mechanic (Will Patton) charges Wendy the few bucks she has left.This is a generally slow movie. There are instances of harrowing tension. There is some tension hoping for good things but expecting bad things to happen to Wendy. It's a series of bad things with some poignant moments. The ending is a little weak. With the way things are going for Wendy, I expect the ending to be a lot more heart-breaking and a lot more final. Riding off into the sunset isn't definitive enough.

Wendy is a young woman who takes out from Indiana in her old Honda Accord with the goal of going to Alaska where, she has been told, there are jobs in the canning industry. Wendy's traveling companion is her dog Lucy. In a small Oregon town Wendy's car breaks down, she is caught shoplifting, and she loses her dog. Without friends or family or a job what does this young girl do? That's the story, with few details left out.I usually like quiet movies, but this one proves that I have my limits. My irritation with the movie and with Wendy began from an early scene that is a long take simply of Wendy walking along with Lucy while humming a nondescript tune. That scene went on so long that I thought it would resolve into something of import, but in fact it merely presaged many such scenes. Perhaps these scenes are there to show how rootless and adrift Wendy was, but I got enough in the first scene. So, a good part of the movie has Wendy walking around while another significant chunk is spent on Wendy's wandering all over the town and countryside yelling "Lucy," after her lost dog. The damn dog was clearly taken, leash and all, from the bike rack. Wendy's interminable and fruitless calling out grated on me to the point that I almost bailed.I got so frustrated with Wendy's bad decisions that I wanted to scream at her. Her first bad decision was to undertake the trip in the first place. If she was desperate enough for work and ambitious enough to undertake the trip, surely she could have vectored her desire for work and her energy in a more constructive way. OK, young people do impulsive, stupid things, but rarely do they persist in the face of the stark reality that Wendy was up against. I was equally irritated by the people that Wendy dealt with. Why didn't one of them at least try to talk to her about her situation--it was clear that she was at sea. Wendy was neither a druggie nor mentally ill. If you came across such a non-threatening, attractive young woman in such straits, would you not at least want to see what you might do to help? Is the safety net in the US so weak that there was no social service that could be called upon? The friendly security guard has nothing but my scorn. He saw exactly what was happening and what did he do? In a guilt-appeasing magnanimous gesture he solemnly handed Wendy six dollars.The ending can be nothing but depressing. From Wendy's walk in the woods we see that it is autumn, and she is heading to Alaska with no suitable gear, not even a sleeping bag. Does she have the personality or wits to survive? I think not. Within a few days or weeks she will be homelessness or dead--take your pick.I like Michelle Williams and she does give this loser a good try; her performance is a positive.

Yes it does a good job of showing how quickly one can go from a shoestring budget to completely homeless with virtually nothing but the clothes on one's back. Relevant yes. Minimalist yes. Alas, minimalist does not always mean good. Sure, lack of soundtrack definitely does highlight her loneliness. Poorly written detour point and story though, probably by someone who has never had a dog they truly loved and depended on to keep them sane when everything else in their life has "gone to the dogs.". Having gone through the loss of my own canine emotional support, I know it is immediately traumatizing, and obsession with finding the pet can overtake everything else, but that doesn't excuse the idiotic things this girl does, and she doesn't seem particularly obsessed anyway. I don't see that she was so upset she was in shock, so I can only concur with one of the other reviewers that this girl seems emotionally stunted and lacking in basic street intelligence. She can walk all over the damn place, but when she's already had to spend money she hadn't planned on (tow plus fine), that's when she starts buying coffee and donuts and paying for taxis when she could surely have gotten within walking distance of the foster house by taking a bus! If she could spend this now, why shoplift and start the whole dang tumble down the hill? Not to mention that if your dog cab handle dry food, you don't suddenly introduce wet (canned) food unless you want a diarrhea fest in your car later on. Dry dog food also isn't THAT expensive if you're just trying to keep your pup alive for a couple weeks till you get where you're going, so why not just buy the stuff? And who isn't aware that a dozen aluminum cans will earn you a whole, hmm, maybe two cents? Sorry, but the glaringly poor view of how stupid the "average" person is when they're down to their last $500 is just inexcusable, not to mention her lack of real emotional reaction to the missing dog. I saw emotion for about 3 seconds at the chain link fence, and that's it. Sure, crying about it prior to that wouldn't directly accomplish anything, but it certainly would have been more realistic to have her have a moment when she's got to just let it all out than just "oh, now I have to look for my dog, one more thing that's holding up my journey."