Wendy and Lucy (Reichardt, 2008): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm
This film is part of the Big Screen Classics strand at BFI Southbank. This screening will be introduced by writer and editor Laura Staab and the film is also being shown on March 8th. Details here.Chicago Reader review:
Kelly Reichardt's masterful low-budget drama tells a story a child could
understand even as it indicts, with stinging anger, the economic
cruelty of George Bush's America. Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain)
is impressively restrained as Wendy, a young homeless woman who's
living in her car with her beloved mutt, Lucy. After the car breaks down
in an Oregon hick town, she makes the mistake of tying Lucy up outside a
grocery store before going in to shoplift, and when she gets busted and
taken to the local police station, the dog disappears. Reichardt (Old Joy)
and co-writer Jonathan Raymond began working on the story after hearing
conservative commentators bash the poor in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina, and their movie is a stark reminder of how easily someone like
Wendy can fall through our frayed safety net. The climax is a
heartbreaker, and in its haunting finale the movie recalls no less than
Mervyn LeRoy's Depression-era classic I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.
JR Jones
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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