Wendy and Lucy (2008) Just passing through.
The film Wendy and Lucy brings together a girl and a dog alas not a child in tow. Just as well as the emotional core of the film is that between Wendy and her dog. Substitute a child for the dog and a more traditonal cinemactic bond would be played out. This is a small gem of a film that can be viewed as both a comment on the hidden homeless or a reflection on the recession in America.
The recession is I think more of an infuence. The film conjures up images that have resonance with the depression in the 1930’s in a particularly Steinbeck manner. The film trys hard to link to his body of work and by conciously showing images of freight trains we are connected to this era. Perhaps the film presses the connection harder than it needed.
Wendy is travelling but this is no gap year but instead to find work in Alaska. Her accomodation is her car. For some Americans now suffering the recession a motel room is keeping with the times. The car and other problems that arise are for many just something we deal with but for the hidden homeless these problems are infinitely larger. Each expense must be registered the camera getting in close as she writes her expenses
Though travelling to Alaska the film is not a journey as Wendy and Lucy spend most of the film in a town already hurting from the recession. A security guard who befriends her reflects on factory closures and asks ‘what do the people do with themselves all day?’ perhaps they have left the town.
Kelly Reichardt who made the simarly well received ‘Old Joy’ creates a film of quite intensity. As she wanders the town, so quite almost like a cleaned up version of Korines ‘Gummo’. Her foray from forest sleep out to town reminds me of the Dardennes ‘Rosetta’.
This film is a cinematic response to the current U.S. downturn. Some assume that cinema responds to an economic crisis with escapist films. This is true of course and U.S. cinema in the 1930’s reflects this response. However cinema in the shape of Wendy and Lucy is not escape but a version of reality holding up a mirror to the economic downturn.
P.S.
David Thomson has penned a great article on depression era cinema of the 1930’s.
Below from the horses mouth an interview with the director of Wendy and Lucy.
