Paul Constant on Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy:
The basic story: A young woman named Wendy (Michelle Williams, tentative and strong and just about perfect) is traveling to Alaska for a good-paying job in the fishing industry and becomes trapped in Oregon when her car breaks down. She promptly loses her beloved dog, Lucy, and spends the rest of the movie trying to find her. But Reichardt’s movies are clearly not about plot. (Old Joy‘s story: Two friends go camping.) They’re more like movie-length meditations on a particular feeling—this is a film about the first time you realize you are completely and utterly on your own.
All week at the Varsity.
