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Wendy and Lucy
Oscilloscope Pictures


6.6

based on 31 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 20 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for language

Starring Michelle Williams, Will Patton, Larry Fessenden, Will Oldham, Walter Dalton, and John Robinson

Wendy Carroll is driving to Ketchikan, Alaska, in hopes of a summer of lucrative work at the Northwestern Fish cannery, and the start of a new life with her dog, Lucy. When her car breaks down in Oregon, however, the thin fabric of her financial situation comes apart, and she confronts a series of increasingly dire economic decisions, with far-ranging repercussions for herself and Lucy. Wendy and Lucy addresses issues of sympathy and generosity at the edges of American life, revealing the limits and depths of people's duty to each other in tough times. (Oscilloscope Laboratories)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Jon Raymond Kelly Reichardt
DIRECTED BY:	Kelly Reichardt
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: December 10, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	80 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Improbably, it's one of the most affecting films of the year, which once again demonstrates that all you need to make a good movie is talent.

100

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Wendy and Lucy is modest, minimalist. But it nonetheless reverberates like a sonic boom.

100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's a tender, tough, uncompromising film, photographed with a disarming directness and seeming simplicity that looks almost naked next to the dramatic constructions of most films. It just makes her precariousness all the more real.

100

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

This is where the movie excels. In the classic neo-realist tradition, it's scant in plot yet rich in mood and character, offering us a revealing hint here, a poignant glimpse there, with each revelation filtered through Michelle Williams's superbly muted performance, all the more moving for being so restrained.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Wendy and Lucy is like "Lassie Come Home" directed by Antonioni. What's piercing about it, and also disturbing, is that Reichardt views the renunciation of society with something close to righteous purity -- as a lefty romantic dream.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Having the dog around raises the emotional stakes tenfold, and develops a kinship with Vittorio De Sica's Italian neo-realist classic "Umberto D.," which also revealed societal ills through a poignant dog-owner relationship

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The film is exquisitely realized, with a tremendous, naturalistic performance by Michelle Williams at its heart and a pervasive, assuring sense that Reichardt and Raymond have distilled everything nonessential from their story and imparted exactly the impact they wished.

Los Angeles Times Sam Adams

Williams' performance is remarkable not only for its depth but for its stillness.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

What will happen to her? The strength of this short, simple, perfect story of a young woman and her dog is that this does not seem, by the end, to be an idle or trivial question. What happens to Wendy -- and to Lucy -- matters a lot, which is to say that Wendy and Lucy, for all its modesty, matters a lot too.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Trembling throughout on the verge of a tearful breakdown, but far too dignified to allow her character to choke up, Williams delivers a sensationally nuanced performance that, were it not so resolutely undramatic, would constitute an aria of stoical misery.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Simple story, beautifully told.

USA Today Claudia Puig

An evocative film with a believable and subtly enthralling lead performance that gets deeply under your skin.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Another illustration of how absorbing a film can be when the plot doesn't stand between us and a character.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Wendy Carroll is a character we rarely see in movies anymore, a woman left alone with her thoughts. That a moviegoer would care what she's thinking testifies to the power in Williams's brand of solitude.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Masterful low-budget drama.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

In a minimalist film of muted emotions, Michelle Williams gives as lovely a performance as a moviegoer could ask for.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Reichardt is a tremendously conscientious filmmaker, and not out to torture the audience. Yes, this is a fraught and agonizing story, but the way it ends, although heartbreaking, is absolutely right.

Variety Scott Foundas

"Old Joy" helmer Kelly Reichardt plays to her strengths in Wendy and Lucy, a modest yet deeply felt road movie about an idealistic young drifter, her faithful canine and the wide-open spaces of the Pacific Northwest.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Because Wendy and Lucy is so lean on plot and dialogue, there are long spaces to contemplate Wendy and her situation, and the logistics are mind-boggling.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A film that might have seemed faintly academic six months ago becomes an anxious expression of its historical moment.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Too often when actors portray complicated or enigmatic characters, they seem to be flirting with the audience, playing hard to get. Not Williams.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

If a Warner Bros. social-protest film from the early 1930s somehow got into bed with an American indie from the 1970s, how would the love-child turn out? Like this.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Reichardt doesn't so much tell a story as paint a finely detailed portrait of human suffering in this miniature marvel.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The transformation undergone by Michelle Williams to play this role is nothing short of astounding.

TV Guide Josh Ralske

Reichardt is such a canny filmmaker that one could almost believe that she intentionally leaves Wendy underwritten and a bit of a cipher, because Wendy is far more effective as a bold-faced symbol of the downtrodden than as a fully realized human character.

The New Yorker David Denby

She's infuriating, but the movie, for all its morose impassivity, is beautiful and haunting.

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

Unless you're an antsy movie-goer or have a cold heart, by the end of Wendy and Lucy, you'll be engrossed, hoping for the best possible outcome.

Washington Post John Anderson

For all its virtues, Wendy and Lucy seems like the most overrated of art movies. Yes, it's obscure and distancing and makes you pay attention. Williams's performance is nuanced, moving and well worth any awards she gets. But Wendy is also anonymous.

Empire Anna Smith

Slow, ponderous, meticulously rendered realism that will appeal to specific audiences of slow, ponderous, meticulously rendered realism, with a heart.

The Hollywood Reporter Staff (Not credited)

Michelle Williams does her best but she cannot prevent Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy, a weak tale about being broke and on the road in rural America, from dwindling into boredom.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Like a worst-case-scenario, indie-movie cliché, Wendy and Lucy throws every bone it can at the screen.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.6 (out of 10) based on 20 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

tintin gave it a2:
I love movies. I see at least 1 art house film per week. This movie was a waste of my time and money. The only bright side is that I only wasted 80 minutes of my life. The entire movie is Michelle Williams looking for her dog. Why is she going to Alaska? Is she going towards something or running away from something? At least the popcorn was fresh.

Jonathan F. gave it a10:
a moving tale of a broke woman trapped outside a society that won't let her in. probably too slow for some, the movie has a quiet pace fitting to the life wendy desperately tries to make new again. as she fights her way to alaska where a job awaits, her car breaks down and she loses her dog, but as depressive the material is the film sits on michelle williams' quietly moving, and captivating performance. it's the most unrewarded, underappreciated performance of the year.

Darryl D. gave it a10:
The pace of this film is as tentative as Wendy's situation. Flawless in its pitch-perfect sense of the place she is, the temperment of the people, and the wideness of the landscape. Kelly knows the area and has it's pulse down. Wendy's fears will grab the viewer, and for the too brief time this film is on, you are unquestionably with her, about her situation, and involved.

Roger M. gave it an8:
A young person's movie because most grown ups are too afraid to do what Wendy is, and a movie about the nature of modern America, all rolled into one. Low key, boring to the simple minded and ADHD, beautifully acted by Michelle Williams, with help from a dog and Walter Dalton.

film lover gave it a3:
I love art films, euro, asian etc... but this film is just plain boring. Williams is terrific and i liked old joy by the same filmmaker, but this is pointless and often doesn't make sense.

James C. gave it a10:
"Wendy and Lucy" is the American answer to the Dardenne brothers' "Rosetta" (1999). Kelly Reichardt has fashioned together a quiet 80-minute masterpiece of cinematic naturalism, unadorned by excess words or music or plot points. Reichardt lends not only an earnest, authentic voice but also a patient ear to the mass of common citizens quietly suffering under the weight of a hundred tiny daily struggles, forever on the fringes of the American middle class -- with the dream (or what's left of it) never quiet within their reach. And as for Michelle Williams....well, she is just exquisite, heartbreaking perfection.

Wendy and Lucy Oscilloscope Pictures

Wendy and Lucy
Oscilloscope Pictures