Red_Identity Wendy and Lucy works because it's straightforward and to the point, and because there's no pandering or melodrama. The bare bones approach, with no actual film score and the way the story simply pans out in the span of a few days, is incredibly investing, and also quite moving. Michelle Williams dominates the screen, and she's practically all we see in almost every scene. She doesn't say much or have to do much, but Michelle Williams' presence is enough to radiate the screen with her warmth and sympathy. It's not just the careful writing and graceful directing that drives this film, but Williams. This is probably her second best performance after Blue Valentine, and it's still a wonder how much she can do with so little.

bandw 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.

MBunge After watching this film, I checked over the DVD features and found a text piece that described the work of filmmaker Kelly Reichardt as "art with profound ambitions on a human scale". Well, I don't know about what else Reichardt has done but you'd have to be one pretentious, ivory tower-livin' mofo to describe Wendy and Lucy as "profoundly ambitious". This is a very quiet, very slow, very naturalistic and extremely minimalistic 80 minutes of storytelling which eschews any sort of ambition, artistically or as entertainment. It's not poorly made and I suppose you could call it a success at what it's apparently trying to do. That purpose, though, has nothing to do with engaging the audience in any real way except to exploit the sentiments of dog lovers.Wendy (Michelle Williams) is a young woman making her way to Alaska for work, joined by her dog Lucy (Lucy the dog). Her POS car breaks down in an Oregon town and then Lucy goes missing, so Wendy spends the rest of the movie looking for her dog and trying to get the car fixed. Neither ends happily. The end.You may think I'm leaving something out of that synopsis but I'm really not. Reichardt's slice-of-life production simply follows this young woman along for a couple of days as she hangs onto the last rung of the economic ladder. Wendy does a lot of walking. She cleans herself in a convenience store bathroom. She makes a bed in the woods out of old sheets of cardboard. She befriends a Walgreen's parking lot security guard. And that's about it. We never know enough about Wendy to care about her for anything other than her missing dog. Nobody says very much. Nothing all that dramatic or comedic happens.If you hate dogs, you'll be bored out of your freakin' mind by this film. Unless you've lived a life that is totally insulated from the realities of working class existence in America and can view Wendy and Lucy as a cinematic safari into that environment, you'll be bored out of your freakin' mind by this film. Even fans of the lovely and talented Michelle Williams will be bored by this thing because she does little besides look forlorn, with about 30 seconds of abject misery thrown in.I mean, there's just nothing to this. The story is practically stillborn. The dialog is forgettable. The camera work is static and uneventful. Honestly, the majority of Wendy and Lucy feels like the deleted scenes that get cut out of a movie because they don't go anywhere or contribute anything to the story. Now, if this is the sort of thing you like, that's all well and good for you. Go ahead and wallow in the uninspired normality of it. But while I don't demand that every movie I watch have laser battles, topless chicks, kicks to the groin and a guy walking away as something explodes behind him, I do need more than what this motion picture is willing to give.This is not ambitious. This is small and limited and indifferent to anything outside of its narrow imagination. It would have been hard enough to sit through this as a 20 minute film festival entry. At four times that length, I'd bet most people never make it through Wendy and Lucy and I don't think they miss anything.

puppyaddict 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."