It’s never referenced. This scene is also essential because it’s one of the few instances in the film where Wendy still has control over her life. When she posts bail and returns to retrieve Lucy, she finds that the dog is gone, prompting a frantic search for her pet. What is the argument for working on a small scale outside the Hollywood industry? -WENDY AND LUCY was made on a shoestring budget. That's one of the last pretty things that you see before things really start going south for her.” It’s also during this scene where Wendy first hums a tune as she is walking. The film is based on Train Choir, an original short story written by Portland native Jon Raymond, whose story captures the locations that surround his everyday life. Parkway Theatre is temporarily closed in response to the evolving situation with COVID-19. Menu. Funny how many times a forlorn train horn is heard nearby, punctuating the quiet desperation of Wendy's plight. By any means necessary. Why do you think Williams wanted to accept the part of a struggling transient which is a departure from her previous roles?Â, -WENDY AND LUCY was made on a shoestring budget. The car was loaned rather than rented and the crew couldn't afford to lose the car midway through production. Looking for some great streaming picks? AFI has created a global, virtual gathering of those who love the movies. Settlers traveling through the Oregon desert in 1845 find themselves stranded in harsh conditions. Lush with a variety of voices, of character types, and of narrative shifts, Wendy and Lucy feels uniquely genuine to life, but like life, vibrantly enjoyable to watch. Wendy’s fiscally meager and thus carefully plots her expenses. Wendy and Lucy was filmed in and around Portland, Oregon on Super 16 with five Zeiss Super Speed Prime lenses. “It’s where she finds rest from all of the harsh realities that happen to her.”. She has previously said, “I don’t consider myself to be working in ‘this industry.’ I didn’t find the industry that inviting. So to me it’s just been trying to figure out how to make films outside of it. When Wendy visits the mechanic to pick up her car, she learns her engine needs to be rebuilt, which would exceed the car's worth. For more information about our free screening of Wendy and Lucy: A high point of Reichardt’s career, Wendy and Lucy also stands as a defining work of the neo-realist filmmaking that transformed American independent cinema in the early 2000s. “I would look at inspirational photographs that Kelly had collaged to get the color texture.” In a film such as Wendy and Lucy, where we are offered a unique look at the surrounding landscapes, because the protagonist is constantly on the go, traveling through town on foot, locations are an essential part of the film. Latest reviews. The open collaboration among the various departments left a special impact on those who worked on the film, particularly Smith, who admits, “I got really spoiled right off the bat. In between my [first] two features I was making these sorts of films but on Super 8. In the confident naturalism of Wendy and Lucy’s recession-era portrait is easily found one of the most resonant indicators of the strength of American independent cinema today. Reichardt cut for six months in her apartment in Queens, occasionally making trips back to Oregon to shoot additional footage. The All-Time Greatest Films Directed by Women, Intermission Ep. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Free this Thursday, January 18th, at 7:30 PM. Wendy is on a trip north. Their objective with this film was creating a stark visual look for the film, one that lacks bright colors, as a way of focusing the attention on its story and characters. And, you know, it’s nice. Lesson learned.”, Sam Levy states that even though their production was on a tight schedule and the weather was often unpredictable, he was never concerned. This location is 90 miles west from where Wendy’s car is parked in Astoria, Oregon. There are scenes that feel comically circumstantial, except that context keeps them imbued with tragic legitimacy; there are other scenes that are almost tough to watch. The primary setting for the film is established early on. [6] Reichardt is deft at handling such vital details in the most realistic of ways. Turn autoplay off. Site by. Kelly Reichardt on the set of WENDY AND LUCY, which plays at the Parkway Theatre Jan. 18th. Reichardt and Jon Raymond adapted the screenplay from his short story Train Choir. Wendy later suffers a breakdown and feels suffocated, as she naturally strips off her clothing. Faires notes that the space “she is walking in has a pastoral, bucolic feel to it. Already perilously close to losing everything, Wendy hits a bigger bump in the road when her old car breaks down and she is arrested for shoplifting dog food. In speaking of the production design of the film, Ryan Warren Smith states that with Wendy and Lucy, more than any other film, his focus was on simplifying what’s within the frame by removing objects or adjusting specific colors rather than adding onto the locations. On the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 85% approval rating among 183 critics, with a rating average of 7.4/10. Amanda Needham is the costume designer of Wendy and Lucy (2008). Needham notes that Smith “added a cross necklace [to the clerk], which is an element that made his character more believable yet slightly more irritating.” In this space, everything we see is authentic to the actual location. In the original short story, her car is described as a gray 1996 Toyota Camry, but the film utilized a maroon 1988 Honda Accord DX, which Smith claims he came across in his own neighborhood. The screen, as P. Adams Sitney has said, is “a window into illusion.” Reichardt, like most other great filmmakers, uses that illusion as a space for personal reflection. In addition to the character of Wendy as a drifter, the film effectively makes use of trains as a recurring visual and aural motif. The sounds of trains repeatedly spill over into scenes, almost as if the trains themselves are playing their part in a choir. Anonymous. WENDY AND LUCY was honored with an AFI AWARD in 2008 – recognizing it as one of the 10 outstanding films deemed culturally and artistically representative of the year’s most significant achievements in the art of the moving image.Â. Want to learn more? 9 – Certain Women (with Orla Smith), ‘First Cow’ is the 1st Oscar-season DVD screener sent to all Academy voters — and will be one of the last of a breed, Bridging the Gender Gap: Best Films from Women Directors, NY Times: 25 Best Movies of the 21st Century. Written by -Did you find Michelle Williams’ performance convincing as Lucy? Her trip should take just under a week, but with the age of her car and Lucy in tow, her situation is rather precarious. “The decision to keep her in one look throughout the whole film was essential to understand her transitory state and in the end helped convey an over all despair in Wendy,” notes Needham. In its opening weekend, Wendy and Lucy grossed $18,218 in 2 theaters in the United States, ranking #54 at the box office. Smith remarks, “We knew it was Oregon but we didn’t want you to know exactly where. Wendy and Lucy is a film starring Michelle Williams as Wendy, a young woman of limited means whose monetary misfortunes result in the agonizing severance of a friendship, and we the audience feel this pain along with Wendy. Smith says, “We knew we were going to shoot there and we had the cross streets so we added those into the dialogue.”, Wendy and Lucy was a labor of love for all those involved. She previously filmed OLD JOY there in 2005. And, of course, Wendy and Lucy was filmed and edited before the great crash of 2008. Writer/director Kelly Reichardt and co-writer Jon Raymond also worked together on Reichardt’s previous film OLD JOY about two friends who reunite for a camping trip in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Wendy and Lucy April 6, 2017 "Don’t be a nuisance. An experimental film matching shifting colors with audio taken from an NPR radio interview with a mother who lost her son in the Iraq War. TV Shows . What's on TV & Streaming What's on TV & Streaming Top Rated Shows Most Popular … The first shot of the movie would be a bookend to the last shot of the movie, so that it’s basically like a train,” Levy remarks. It's not that I don't like movies with these elements in them; It's that a prefer movies without them. However, life outside the fences of domesticity presents more challenges than merely strict budgeting. Wendy is told that Lucy is “where the 30 meets Leif Erickson.” This dialogue matches the actual location of the house. “Kelly had a great idea, which was that the first and last shots of the movie would be moving. ... WENDY AND LUCY is the first narrative feature that boutique distributor Oscilloscope Pictures ever distributed.

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