Wanda

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.

Sheez, what a depressing film. I think a lot of people can identify with it. A woman has no direction and no hope. She just sinks lower and lower without anyone to help her.

The film is slow and has quite a few unneccesary scenes, just like Wanda's life.

It is amazing a woman got this project made and was allowed to direct. I'm glad it exists as tribute to her. She passed away far too young. I hope her life wasn't as bleak as this story.

It begins with the office clerk telling Wanda she is "too slow in every working process". Wanda loses her job. Her husband also doesn't want her anymore. He wants the divorce and the children. Wanda is asked by the judge if she agrees with the divorce. She says it doesn't matter. Wanda makes a journey. She goes to the cinema, meets a guy, sleeps with him and he leaves her. The movie goes on.

Wanda goes into a bar. There is no barkeeper but a robber who ties the barkeeper. He tells Wanda to leave. She stays. The man, Mr. Dennis, takes her into his apartment. There is something like a relationship that develops between Mr. Dennis and Wanda though Mr. Dennis is very rude. He plans a bigger robbery. Wanda wants to help.

Barbara Lodens "Wanda" is a road movie on the road to nowhere. Wanda wants to be part of something and she doesn't know of what. In her eyes we can see the whole emptiness of a not self-determined woman's life. There is not much hope, the last picture of the movie is frozen.

...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.

A fairly low budget effort but not without some interesting scenes, made even more interesting by decent performances from its two principals actors. Towards the end it seemed to wander a bit unsteadily, but then it ends in a haunting and memorably sad, final scene. Overall I would say its worth a watch, even though it falls short of being truly great.