January 4th / Key Sunday Cinema Club
Landmark Midtown Art Cinema
Wendy and Lucy is about a woman who loses her dog while stranded in a small town in Oregon waiting for her car to be repaired. Really. That's it. That's the whole movie. It's 80 minutes of Michelle Williams counting what little cash she has and looking for her dog.
And normally, this would be the sort of slow-moving, minimalist indie picture that I would stay far, far away from. I don't know if it's because the dog reminds me of my dog Blue or just because I find anything with a woman and her dog automatically more relatable, but in this case, I was okay with it.
True, it's not action-packed. There's not even a lot of dialog, really. But I liked it's stripped-down quality - everything was conveyed clearly and concisely and all you knew about the character was what was happening to her in the story at the moment, which I feel has a certain purity to it. I thought it worked nicely. But again, I'm a sucker for dogs.
I was clearly in the minority in today's Cinema Club audience; I heard several apologies from people to friends they'd brought for the first time and others complaining that it wasn't worth getting up early and driving in from Blairsville, GA. Definitely not a popular choice. I'd be cautious about recommending it to just anyone. But I surprised myself by feeling that it was actually worth checking out and I'm glad I was sort of forced into seeing it.
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