Wendy and Lucy

Wendy and Lucy makes for an easy review if you just want to talk about what happens. Girl loses dog girl finds dog. Nothing happens, Wendy and Lucy rejoices in exploring all the nothing moments between a girl and her dog. Michelle Williams dresses down and stars while director Kelly Reichardt seeks the small moments of joy that occur in life.
Wendy follows the path of a different drum. Driving her compact car in route to a summer job with dog (Lucy) riding shotgun Wendy is laid back but poor, easy going but living week to week. When her car breaks down the situation goes from sleeping in the car to save motel money to wondering if there's enough money to fix the car and finish the trip.
Just when things look bleak Wendy shoplifts a couple of dollars worth of junk food from a supermarket and gets popped by the nerd checker/security dude. In the time it takes to pay bail (there goes the car repair cheese) and return to where she left Lucy tied outside the store the dog has gone missing.
Wendy and Lucy plays like an art film, the emphasis rests on emotion and the performances of Williams with a little Will Patton (as the car repairman) thrown in for good measure. Wendy and Lucy plays like a quiet festival film, there's not a wealth of action other that looking for the canine. Wendy is an everyman (or everyperson) for our times. Her economic reality mirrors what everyone else presumably is going through. Her mental equilibrium consistently vibrates with all the bad buzz but she maintains a quiet grace throughout her ordeals that you have to admire and relate to on some level.
Wendy and Lucy will play in a single theater (opens Friday at the downtown Angelika) and be gone before you know it, but now's the time to focus on Williams. She may very well pick up Heath Ledger's Oscar on Sunday (not etched in stone but fairly certain) as she is the mother of their daughter, and while not legally married still the closest thing to a wife and thus legal guardian of said award.
Williams as Wendy looks uncombed and non glamourous throughout much in contrast to her previous role as the supermodel in I'm Not There or even her appearance in Synecdoche, New York. Williams easily channels the kind of common sense and fair play that Henry Fonda used in his homestyle portrayals of working men. For Wendy it's just a series of bad breaks that have left her homeless along the uncharted roads of America.