Wendy and Lucy at the NYFF

You don’t often see stories like this on the big screen. A young woman, Wendy (Michelle Williams), is traveling with her dog, Lucy, from Indiana to Alaska, washing up in gas stations and meticulously keeping track of pennies and mileage in a ruled notebook. Her car breaks down in Oregon, Lucy disappears, and Wendy slips further into degradation. The movie begins with no preamble and ends just as quietly (and abruptly). In the Q&A afterward, Kelly Reichardt mentioned that she had victims of Hurricane Katrina in mind as she filmed the short story by frequent collaborator John Raymond; she wanted to explore the “disdain for poverty” endemic to America today. Like Old Joy (2006), Wendy and Lucy examines a particular set of white, liberal, middle-class concerns, but here Reichardt is more pointed, crafting a sharply political world out of a handful of characters struggling to make their way.

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