WENDY AND LUCY (USA, 2008)
Wednesday, 2nd December 2009

By bringing this remarkable film to Eastbourne we are enabling our audiences to judge for themselves a style of film-making that has not appeared in our programmes before – or not in its fully fledged form at least. I am referring to what has been given the name of minimalist cinema, and the reason why we have ignored it until now lies in the fact that for most audiences it is a mode that can all too easily misfire and lead to boredom. In contrast to that Wendy and Lucy handles the style so skilfully that it offered us the ideal opportunity to bring forward a work of this kind. It could still be that some viewers will fail to get on its wavelength, but we hope that the majority will appreciate what the film-maker, Kelly Reichardt, has achieved.

First of all, let me provide some background about this particular approach to cinema. Generally speaking, the majority of films offer a strong story-line and, unless comedy is being attempted, strong dramatic scenes. But some artists – and my favourite film-maker, Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu, is a notable example – took the view that while this approach is standard the dramatisation involved meant that most films are clearly fictions rather than true representations of life as it is lived. Ozu, who specialised in stories about family life, devoted most of his long career to developing tales that drew directly on everyday life and accordingly created his dramas not out of big gestures but out of small revealing details that could be seen as significant while also being true to the minutiae of real life. This is a method which by cutting out the exaggerations central to most fiction could be described as akin to what has become minimalistic cinema and it proved its worth in many films by Ozu some of which – Tokyo Story, An Autumn Afternoon, I Was Born, But... have been shown by the Eastbourne Film Society to appreciative audiences.

However, these family portraits tended to have a relatively large canvas and that ceases to be the case in truly minimalist works like Wendy and Lucy. A very small group of characters featured in the 2005 film Old Joy which was Kelly Reichardt’s first feature made by her in collaboration with Jon Raymond. Similarly the focus in this second feature of hers is in terms of the number of characters quite narrow. Its origin was a short story by the said Jon Raymond who is co-author of the screenplay with Kelly and it’s a work that invites us to identify with the central character, Wendy, played quite splendidly by Michelle Williams. We are given no background details regarding Wendy’s life to date but encounter her at a time when she is setting out by car for Alaska in the hope of better prospects and a chance to start afresh. In undertaking this endeavour she is travelling alone save that she is not truly on her own because she has with her Lucy, who is her dog.

Two other aspects besides this emphasis on one character make this a true example of minimalist cinema. First, there’s the fact that stylistically the direction is simple and direct in the sense that there is no bravado camera movement or anything to draw attention to the skills of the film-maker. Instead, there is a great sense of atmosphere with Sam Levy’s colour photography capturing the very essence of small-town America. The other aspect that is crucial to the nature of the film is that it deals not so much with a story – you could hardly say that the film has anything as elaborate as a plot – but with a situation. Wendy’s particular situation is that things go wrong for her when, en route for Alaska, she is passing through Oregon. It’s not just that her car refuses to start but that it needs repair work for which she finds a local mechanic (Will Patton). This is a worrying extra expense – she has been keeping an inventory of what the journey is costing her and has made calculations as to how much more is needed to get her to her destination – and it is with worries of this kind in mind that she makes a disastrous decision. Going into a supermarket and leaving Lucy tied up outside, she picks out some dog food and other provisions and opts to preserve her funds by walking out of the store without paying. Her actions are observed by a young store employee, Andy (John Robinson), who ensures that she is taken off to the local police station where she ends up paying an on-the-spot fine in lieu of returning for trial. But there’s yet worse to come: returning to the supermarket to pick up Lucy, she finds that the dog is missing and no one can help her as to where Lucy might be. Enquiries at the local pound draw a blank and Wendy can only wait around hoping for news of Lucy.

As will be noted, the way in which Wendy’s plight develops is entirely true to what could happen in real life, and it is the stasis inherent in her need in this situation to stay put that becomes the heart of the ‘drama’ The fact that Michelle Williams, first noted in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005), plays Wendy so persuasively is of course vital to the film’s success, as is the fact that the screenplay finds exactly the right tone. Thus, the shop-lifting is an action of which one disapproves and which prevents a too-easy sympathy for Wendy, but at the same time we can understand why she did it. But, even more importantly, the manner in which the film eschews sentimentality means that it avoids all of the pitfalls which usually mar movies for the mainstream which choose to tell a tale about a pet animal and the owner devoted to it.

It might be deduced from all this that by capturing the atmosphere so well and by justifying its subtle exploration of a limited situation Wendy and Lucy would be a film that could be celebrated as a small but telling work and one aided by the decision to make it a comparatively short feature (it lasts only 80 minutes). However, I believe that the crowning achievement of Kelly Reinhardt’s film is that, working on principles that Ozu would have fully understood and endorsed, it does not come across as a small film at all. As we the viewers identify with the situation in which Wendy finds herself, we become aware of just how important are the attitudes which we adopt towards strangers. The film becomes a work that shows how a touch of human sympathy, or the lack of it, can transform a situation. Two figures here illustrate coldness to others: there’s Wendy’s sister with whom she communicates by telephone and Andy who pushes for her to be reported for shop-lifting. The latter’s stance is arguably justified initially, but later we note his total lack of concern when Wendy finds that Lucy has gone missing. Those working in the pound and at the police station simply do their jobs, and this may also be true of the car mechanic, although we may wonder if his charges are as reasonable as he claims. But there’s also another man in town, a stranger to Wendy, whose attitude is different, and this is an elderly security guard. It’s a role splendidly played by Walter Dalton and what he does to assist Wendy, somewhat insubstantial though it may be, is in fact of great value to her. Here without any sense of mawkishness we have an illustration of the importance of human connection. What you find in this film is a comment on the need for true human contact between people even though they be strangers and, not dissimilarly, a recognition of the value of a bond between a person and a pet. The more you think about it, the more you realise that simple though it seems Wendy and Lucy comments profoundly on the human condition.
Programme Note by Mansel Stimpson.