Wendy and Lucy

Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy boasts an impressive performance by Michelle Williams as sad-faced young drifter Wendy, who is driving to Alaska in search of work, accompanied by her faithful pooch Lucy. After her beat-up Honda breaks down in a small Oregon town, financially-strapped Wendy tries to steal some dog food and is arrested for shoplifting, but when she's released, Lucy is gone and the rest of the film chronicles Wendy's desperate efforts to find her dog and fix the car. Along the way she bumps into various people (some nicer than others), ranging from a menacing man in a park, to a security guard who shows her some much-needed kindness. Wendy and Lucy lacks the poetic spirit of, say, Gus Van Sant's best minimalist exercises (Gerry and Elephant), instead opting for a gritty, matter-of-fact approach that mimics documentary simplicity, but Williams powerfully captures her character's fragile stoicism and underlying vulnerability with nary a false note. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include five experimental short films from the Film Faculty at Bard College (curated by director Kelly Reichardt), including “Boston Fire” (5 min.) and “New York Portrait” (12 min.) by Peter Hutton, “Flight” (7 min.) by Les LeVeque, “Scary Movie” (8 min.) by Peggy Ahwesh, and “How to Fix the World?” (29 min.) by Jacqueline Goss. Bottom line: an interesting extras package for a fine character study.] (F. Swietek)