Wanda

...WANDA is nonetheless a stirring portrait of a woman who has lost her direction in life; that is, assuming she wasn't just going through the societally-mandated paces from the start, which I suspect.

Abandoning her husband and children without a second thought, she sets off on a journey to...nowhere in particular. Latching ignobly onto any man who will pick her up for a quickie, Wanda, played with remarkable veracity by the film's director Barbara Loden, drifts for a while until she stumbles upon a nomadic, dyspeptic robber, whom she meekly accompanies in his run from the law. After a series of escalating events which could have led to tragedy for her, Wanda is given a reprieve. Instead of taking advantage of her second chance, her detached indolence is too strong to overcome, and the cycle of soul-searching is apparently ordained to continue ad infinitum.

Recalling such contemporary cinematic works as FIVE EASY PIECES (1970), A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974), the great GOIN' DOWN THE ROAD (1970), and TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971) in its characters' aimlessness and blind existentialism, "Wanda" also has echoes of Bresson's oeuvre; most of all, the film seems to have been a direct influence on Susan Seidelman's SMITHEREENS (1982), an equally good picture.

To the film's detriment, its characters are such pathetic no-hopers that they are not easy to relate to, especially since they are given no biographical framework whatsoever. Moreover, the cinema verite direction is a little too self-consciously austere, lingering unduly on some scenes. Loden seems unaware of the misconception that merely letting the camera run on automatically lends a scene profundity; sometimes the film seems as hollow as its characters. Then again, that's the point. I liked "Wanda" quite a bit, but it takes patience to tease out its nuances, and is hence not for all tastes.

Barbara Loden, the wife of film director Elia Kazan, wrote, directed and stars in this portrait of a born loser in blue-collar Pennsylvania. Wanda is the perfect bad example: she's poorly educated, unemployed, a doormat for any available man...and when she walks into a bar one night to use the bathroom, she has no idea the lone man inside is actually robbing the place. Loden, who looks like a bedraggled version of Joanne Woodward in some of her hick roles, also helped to raise the funds for this picture, which played film festivals and garnered good critical buzz yet wasn't widely distributed. The uneven sound is fuzzy, the camera-work is all over the place, and the lenient editing allows scenes to ramble on far longer than necessary (also the baby screaming during the film's opening five minutes was a big mistake). However, despite these serious faults, the movie has a realistically squalid, hopeless ambiance that is, at times, touching, pathetic, ingenuous and very natural. A bumpy ride, but worthwhile for fans of character studies. **1/2 from ****

At last! An American director who can ingest European influences maturely, not as a superficial and desperate plea for depth. In its tale of a woman drifting through a barren landscape, falling in with abusive or indifferent men; in its distanced style, its pared down performances and dialogue, its long takes of nothing in particular, or rather, of everything, of life, mundane actions, of people looking and finding and doing; in its use of the crime genre for anti-generic and anti-narrative ends; in its restrained use of religious symbolism culminating in an enigmatic scene in a catacombs, one is reminded of Bresson - less rigorous, maybe, but less misogynistic too, more open.

The central relationship and road movie format reminds me of 'La Strada'; the bank robbery an absurdist take on 'Gun Crazy'. Mostly, this is a wonderful one-off, and it is a real crime that its maker only made this one film, while her husband was allowed over twenty.

Mousy, uneducated, impoverished Wanda falls for a sleazy small-time crook, and they hit the road together. This movie has everything going against it--it's very low-key, cheaply made (dig that shaking camera), and paced only a little more swiftly than your average Andy Warhol film. But even though it plays like a cut-rate "Badlands," it succeeds powerfully in evoking sympathy for its pathetic title character. Its slow pace gives it a meditative quality for the patient viewer. Depressing but memorable; it should be more widely seen.

These sort of movies tend to be or get pretentious and annoying pretty easily but not this one though, which makes this simply a good and perfectly watchable little movie.

I wouldn't even call this movie an independent one. It's being more one that feels and look like it got shot guerrilla style, so without any planning and preparations to it. They simply shot stuff on the spot, with the available equipment and actors and would also improvise most of their lines. That at least was the feeling this movie gave me but I don't actually know if this truly was the case for this movie.

The approach definitely adds to the realistic feeling of the movie. It's being a random slice of life if you will, though it still is very much following a type of story that you will only see in a movie. The characters and the way how they are handling certain situations still make sure that the movie feels like a realistic one.

But because of it that the movie feels like it got done guerrilla style, the movie also doesn't have the best looking and sounding quality to it. The sound is simply just bad at times and the cinematography also really isn't being anything all too special or stylish to watch. Guess they thought that in this cast the story and the storytelling would be enough to create a great movie with but I just still missed far too many (basic) movie-making ingredients in this movie, that can make a movie of this sort great for me.

And lets face it, the main reason why this movie still floats around is because it got directed, written and stars Barbara Loden, who was married to legendary film-maker Elia Kazan, making this a bit of a curiosity piece perhaps. But really, there is not much about this movie that stands out. It's being a good and original little movie within its genre but I only wished that the movie also would had had more to offer, with its main story and characters perhaps. I simply didn't got an awful lot out of this movie but I can at least say about this movie that I was never annoyed or bored with it.

Definitely a watchable and good movie but just nothing to run out for, in my opinion.

7/10

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