Wendy and Lucy (2008) | dir. Kelly Reichardt | 80 min | USA

Wendy and Lucy is a brave piece of work — a sharp incision into the myth of the supposedly-renewing American dream and a meditation on the economic roots of existentialism (yes, some people are actually sad and lonely for a reason). What little there is of a plot — a poor young vagabond Wendy (Michelle Williams) loses her dog, Lucy (as herself), and tries to find her — is more than made up for with a series of understated scenes, each one more desperate and lonely than the last. 

The film opens with Wendy and Lucy walking through a field, a respite from a roadtrip in progress. Writer/director Kelly Reichardt immerses us into a story that started without us, refusing to establish location and plot in the first scene. This, however, is not a failure, but a potent, creative use of breaking the rules. Literally and figuratively, Wendy is nowhere (but presumably somewhere near or in Oregon, where writer/director Kelly Reichardt usually sets her films). Where she is isn’t as important as where she’s going – Ketchikan, Alaska – in order to find work (“I heard they need people up there”). Stealing food, meeting other vagabonds, sleeping in parking lots, dry-showering in gas station bathrooms, her fragile grip hinges on Lucy’s companionship. After she gets arrested for stealing food for Lucy, she returns to the store to find her gone. Wendy goes from fragile to breaking, and for the next hour, the girl from Dawson’s Creek becomes the quiet, subdued face of The New Depression.

It’ll be interesting to watch the direction(s) American cinema will take in the near future. Mainstream film critics are making parallels between the present recession and The Great Depression, when entertainment — escapist fare, to be specific — flourished, with studios banking on the notion that folks crowded into dark theaters to forget about their troubles – as some boneheaded critics like this one seem to accept as The Truth. Of course films should entertain, but who’s deciding what is and isn’t entertainment? It’s understandable that working, struggling people would shy away from paying to see even more depressing shit. But fantasy eventually dissipates, reality endures, and contradictions abound. Perhaps it isn’t that we want escapist fare so much as the movie industry, run by rich folks who barely feel the ill effects of a recession, wants us to want it. 

So, even though Wendy and Lucy may have been a little too existential for my liking, it’s germaneness to the present can’t be overstated. Big up to Kelly Reichardt and other filmmakers who turn the cameras on regular folk, fighting an uphill climb to show America what America really looks like. Extra big up for repping women filmmakers right. At the very least, films like Wendy and Lucy (and other recent American realist films like Rahmin Bahrani’s Chop Shop) work as social, historical document – if not for today’s audience, then perhaps for later ones. At best, these films have the potential to be a hammer that smashes old myths about society. Including the one that treats cinema as a recreational opiate.

• Read: The New Depression Cinema by Vadim Rizov (via GreenCine Daily)