Wendy and Lucy

Most people wouldn't choose Wendy's life. She has a solitary existence on the margins of society, with very little money although she plans to go to Alaska to find work. What she does have, besides a plan, is a car and Lucy, her dog and only companion. Things start to go wrong when the ageing car breaks down in a small town. In order to conserve her meagre funds, Wendy shoplifts dogfood and is caught. In a sardonic tough, the young shop assistant sporting a very large crucifix turns out to be singularly lacking in Christian compassion (more an Old than New Testament guy) By the time she's paid a fine, thus depleting her cash even more, and made her way back to the store, Lucy has vanished. She spends the rest of the film trying to find her. It's a simple story but not simplistic. With her savings decreasing daily and her desperation to find Lucy increasing, Wendy drifts ever closer to poverty. The people around her get by as best they can, but compared to her they seem impossibly wealthy. She forms a touching bond with the elderly security guard who initially moved her on. He lets her use his mobile phone to contact the pound, and the fact that she lacks such an object says a huge amount about her social status. Without an address and a phone number she can't get a job; without a job she can't get anywhere to love or buy a phone. The perfect catch-22. When her car is towed to the garage she resorts to sleeping out in the woods, leading to a deeply disturbing nocturnal encounter, further stressing her vulnerability. And if there's a more heartbreaking scene this year than the tracking shot at the pound then I don't think I want to see it. By the film's end, Wendy's existence has become even more precarious than at the beginning: little money, no car and no Lucy. It's desperately, desperately sad.