On the Margins
by Howard Schumann

Hoping to find a job in a fishing cannery in Alaska, Wendy (Michelle Williams), a drifter in her twenties, travels to the Pacific Northwest from her home in Muncie, Indiana with her most endearing companion, a golden Labrador Retriever named Lucy, whom she calls Loo. Looking masculine with a short haircut, a flannel shirt and a sweatshirt with a hood, Wendy seems aimless yet she is believable when expressing a desire for stability to a group of itinerant drifters at a campsite. Co-written by Jonathan Raymond, Kelly Reichardt’s deeply affecting Wendy and Lucy, like her 2006 film Old Joy, combines an intimate personal story with a reflection of the malaise felt in the country today, Wendy's economic hardship typical of people adrift in a society of which they no longer feel a part.

The film is set near the Oregon/Washington border in a small town that, with its roadside strip malls, gas stations, car repair garages, and convenience stores, is reflective of rural American cities and towns that have lost the character that once made them unique. As the film opens, Wendy plays with Lucy in the Oregon woods - the only sounds heard are Wendy humming a melancholy song. While sleeping in her 1988 Honda on Walgreen’s property, she is awakened by a security guard (Wally Dalton) who tells her to move on but discovers that her car will not start. On a limited budget, she is shaken when the repair amount confirmed by the town mechanic (Will Patton) is greater than expectations. Trying to save some money, Wendy makes a serious mistake by stealing dog food at a grocery store.

Unable to convince a smug teenage clerk to give her a break, Wendy leaves Lucy tied to a post outside the market while she is taken to jail on a shoplifting charge. When released after paying a fine that costs considerably more than the dog food, she discovers that Lucy has disappeared and the film’s focus turns to Wendy’s frantic and lonely search for her beloved dog. As she pays a visit to the local pound and looks for Loo around the town, a mood of profound emptiness pervades the deserted streets revealing the number of young people that have moved away.

Assisted by the Walgreen's security guard who lets her use his cell phone to call the pound and leave his number as a call back, Wendy is hopeful after posting signs all over town but the waiting drains her energy and her run-in with a deranged homeless man while sleeping in the woods frightens her to the core. Seeking some solace, she calls her brother in Indiana but meets only indifference, his girlfriend in the background asking what it is that she wants now. Not deterred, Wendy’s spirit and determination allows us to recognize that the fight for self worth is not limited by material possessions or the opinion of others. Reminiscent of the Dardenne Brothers’ ability to capture the emotional anguish of young people, Wendy and Lucy establishes Reichardt as one of the premier indie filmmakers in the U.S. today.

Werner Erhard once said that if you want your life to work, begin by cleaning out your closet. In twenty five-year-old director Isild Le Besco’s Charly, a loquacious streetwalker takes this advice and helps a fourteen-year-old runaway get his life together by pushing him to complete routine household tasks. Charly is a tender, totally honest, and completely believable look at two people who need each other but are unable to communicate. Shot in a format that does not even fill up a normal movie screen, let alone widescreen, the actors are mostly silent and the camera does not move very much, yet the film is never static or dull. Le Besco’s younger brother Kolia Litscher is Nicholas, a sullen and listless fourteen year-old. Underachieving at school, the boy has trouble adjusting in the home of his grandparents (Jeanne Mauborgne and Kadour Belkhodja) and his teachers do not provide much encouragement.

One teacher tells him that he is very lazy and questions him about how he sees his future. To that, Nicholas tells him laconically, "I'm waiting for the future to come.” When the teacher leaves a book of the controversial German 1891 play Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind with a picture postcard of Belle-Île, a seaside resort, inserted, Nicholas has all he needs to pack his bags and head for his dream island. Charly (Julie-Marie Parmentier), a feisty twenty year-old prostitute finds him on the streets of a nearby city and asks him if he wants to come to her trailer home in the countryside. From there, Nicholas and Charly develop a most unusual relationship, one that is oddly supportive.

Charly assigns Nicholas routine tasks such as cleaning, washing dishes, getting water from the outside faucet, taking out the garbage, and shopping for bread, manifesting a need for assurance and structure. Nicholas, who apparently has never before been asked to do anything for himself, is a willing pupil, and Charly is grateful to have someone at home to do the chores that she would rather not have to do. Though there is no communication about thoughts or feelings (Nicholas never questions what Charly does at night or who picks her up each day on a motorcycle), their relationship develops an intimacy based on mutual need.

Parmentier’s performance makes the film come alive, especially in the sequence when the two read aloud from Wedekind’s play and act out crying and beating each other, perhaps the nearest thing to intimacy that each is capable of. In Le Besco’s words, “I think that communication is not easy. To really communicate with someone you have to work hard to do something together. You have to be able to give a little of yourself. I think these two are able to give a little of themselves when they are reading this text of the play. But otherwise, they cannot really do it.” Though Nicholas does a lot of growing up, Charly is no formulaic coming-of-age indie, and the film is not limited to a kitchen-sink reality. Several dreamlike sequences probe the inner workings of Nicholas’ mind and allow us to see what cannot be verbally communicated. A tastefully done sexual initiation scene is also part of this totally unique gem that clamors for wider distribution.

©2008 Howard Schumann
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