A severe lack of flash

It is an unfortunate fact that movies that do very well at American theaters are often replete with sex, violence and loud, in-your-face action. If this describes success in film, then Wendy and Lucy will definitely not be a hit.

What the general public looks for in film, as a rule, is a certain strangeness of story. Not strange in the sense that it’s odd, but in the way that it is different than ourselves and gives us something to ponder or wish for or to try to emulate. Action films do great at the box office because lots of people want to be that brave and physical and over the top. Too many, in fact.

So what happens when the story is about a girl living on the fringe who loses her dog? Not a lot. Reality is a tricky business in the film industry.

Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) is on her way to Alaska in search of a job. She has driven from Indiana with no real plan and very little money in a car that is falling apart. After arriving in Wilsonville, Ore., she meets a group of homeless people who give her some advice about the prospects in Alaska. That night she and her dog, Lucy, sleep in the car in the parking lot of Walgreen’s.

By morning, she is woken up by the store’s security guard who tells her that she can’t sleep there. She tries to move the car, it won’t start, so she and the guard move the car to the street. A little later, she gets arrested for shoplifting, her dog disappears and she spends three days looking for it with the help of the security guard.

The difficulty in watching this movie is threefold. First, it is very slow because we are watching real life; not the manipulated reality of reality television, but what actually happens to people when things don’t go as planned. Second, people who live in the margins of society have traditionally not been the focus of great films unless they’ve done something extraordinary, such as in Hero. 

Third, and most problematic, is that this film seems like the middle of the story. On the surface, it seems to have a beginning, middle and end in that, at first she has the dog, she loses and searches for the dog, then finds the dog.

However, we don’t know what happened to make her take this trip or why her sister is so hostile to her or why she chose Alaska. The end of the film leaves us with so many unanswered questions it’s hard to imagine that anyone thought it was a complete enough story to make a movie from.

But then maybe this film isn’t about what we do care about but what we should. When Lucy calls home, her sister assumes that she’s calling for money to get the car fixed. The car repairman is a jerk who charges her to tow the car across the street rather than pushing it. The worker at the dog pound is annoyed that Wendy has no phone and has to check in rather than waiting for them to call her.

The kindest people she encounters are the security guard, the store manager (even though he has her arrested) and the homeless kids. She is surrounded by people so caught up in their own lives that they forget other people reside on Earth with them.

Not to say that everyone should, or can, have the capacity to care about everyone else on earth, but it’s a little sad that the person who cares most about Wendy and her dog is the security guard at Walgreen’s, with whom she never exchanges names.

Not having read the original book by Oregon author Jonathon Raymond, co-editor of Tinhouse, it’s difficult to know what he was going for, and since the movie doesn’t shed any light on the thought process, we are left in the dark.

Perhaps this is one of those times when a book shouldn’t be translated to film because the story is better read than seen.