Copyright © 2012 by James Clark
At the outset of Kelly Reichardt’s film from 2008, Wendy is taking her dog, Lucy, for a walk in some wooded area near a railway freight yard where one of the boxcars announces, “Golden West Service.” She puts moderate body English into her tossing a stick for her golden girl to retrieve; and there’s a tone of curiously guarded warmth in her voice, “Drop it, Luce!” Coinciding with that attenuation unsuited to so young a woman with school girlish features, are her severe hair, faded complexion and boyish attire—a sweatshirt with a hoodie and tight basketball-length shorts (somehow redolent of the presence of Joan of Arc).
