When the car won’t start, the guard helps her to push across the street, where it sits within sight of a garage that’s closed. Awakened by a loud knock on her window, Wendy looks weary, startled, then resigned: the store’s security guard (Walter Dalton) leans toward her window, reciting what you know he will: “You can’t sleep here,” he says gently, “You can’t park here, that’s the rules.”Īt this point, Wendy’s movement stops. The next morning, pigeons gather on telephone wires and trains rumble along the nearby train tracks. She murmurs, gently, “Baby girl,” as the camera cuts to a long shot from overhead, the car small and alone in a Walgreens parking lot. Putting away her notebook, Wendy looks on Lucy asleep in the car beside her. Though she never specifies how she’s come to her particular state, Wendy has lost everything - save for her dog and her 1988 Honda. Kelly Reichardt’s movie, based on Jon Raymond’s short story “Train Choir,” observes her efforts to keep moving despite assorted, persistent obstacles. The scene cuts here to Wendy’s crossed-out calculations in a notebook and carefully counted 20s and singles, which she stores flat in a pouch around her waist: Wendy has plans, you gather, hoping for a fresh start in a place where, she tells another new acquaintance later, “they need people.” Her story doesn’t so much begin at this point in Wendy and Lucy as it picks up. After she explains that she’s on her way to Ketchikan, Alaska in search of work, the campers smile, one of them (Will Oldham) named Icky and especially eager to share the story of his own happy, if brief, employment at an Alaskan construction site. Feeling assured by their friendliness, Wendy steps forward, identifying the dog as hers, and they welcome her, the firelight dancing over their smudged faces, pierced lips, and tattoos. Finding her at last, Wendy waits and watches though tree branches: the dog has made new friends, a group of homeless-looking kids who pet her and coo around a campfire. When Lucy rushes ahead, Wendy follows, calling: “Loo,” she calls out, her voice high and musical. She throws a stick, Lucy brings it back, and they enjoy the sunny, easy motion of a day in rural Oregon. Wendy (Michelle Williams) walks with her dog Lucy, the camera tracking from a distance. But it was post-Katrina, and it was in the middle of this ever-present divide of feeling just the huge gap between the rich and the poor, and some of the response from Katrina of just, “You should have never let yourself be that vulnerable in the first place.” But that was before things were even this bad. When we made the film, our first thought was we’re going to make a film about the economy.
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