In “Wendy and Lucy,” Wendy is a young woman driving her old Honda from her Midwestern home in the general direction of Alaska.
Maybe she’ll get a job in a salmon cannery. Maybe she read “Into the Wild” and got caught by the impulse to roam, ignoring the part about the wanderer starving to death in the wilderness.
Maybe she wants to find herself, or maybe she wants to be found. Or maybe, like a lot of travelers over the years, she just wants to get lost.
Lucy is her dog. The movie that bears their names is entirely about Wendy’s car dying on a nondescript urban corner in Oregon, and about her separation from Lucy. For Portland filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, this is enough to build a film on.
Reichardt’s previous effort was “Old Joy,” an even more minimalist look at people on the margins. Already in that film, you could see her ability to capture certain angles on Northwest places — a piece of forest, the way the sky looks before it rains.
All of that is present in “Wendy and Lucy,” but the film is much more fully lived-in. And Reichardt has done a smart thing: Since the missing dog instantly pulls us into the story, it means she can take her time about everything else.
The film almost seems to be unfolding in real time, although it isn’t. Wendy wanders around town, occasionally buoyed by the kindness of strangers, searching for her dog and hoping her car will start again. In some ways the movie is to be about someone too frail to fit comfortably into society, so the world marches heedlessly on.
Since this is not a film that trades in explanatory dialogue or motivations, it requires an actress who can express Wendy’s world without doing very much. At this, Michelle Williams, an actress with a long list of interesting projects and fine performances, succeeds beautifully.
The only other recognizable actor is Will Patton, who plays a car-repair guy in one of those encounters where you can’t really know whether you’re being taken advantage of or not. There’s also a security guard, played by Wally Dalton, who lends a sympathetic ear to Wendy’s plight.
Reichardt’s style doesn’t tell you what to feel, but you will feel plenty. And although Williams makes Wendy a specific person, “Wendy and Lucy” might make you think generally about the Wendys walking past on the street every day, who are similarly on the margins. It’s one of those movies that quietly gets into your mind and stays there, like a tune you hum without even knowing it.
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