Wendy and Lucy

Director: Kelly Reichardt

2008 / 80min / DCP

Described by Reichardt as a post-Katrina movie, Wendy and Lucy is an unsentimental portrayal of life on the fringes in the United States, following down-on-her-luck Wendy (a sublimely stoic Michelle Williams, often carrying the film alone), her pet dog, and her haggard Honda on an aimless road trip from Indiana to the Alaskan frontier. Based on a short story by Jon Raymond, like the filmmaker’s previous Old Joy (2006), and similarly combining a sorrowful social vision with an awestruck view of the natural world, Wendy and Lucy cemented Reichardt’s reputation as one of the foremost cinematic chroniclers of American dreams deferred. “Modest but cosmic… the most melancholy of American sagas.”—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

Part of American Landscapes: The Cinema of Kelly Reichardt