Just in time for the global economic meltdown comes Wendy and Lucy, a tiny perfect film about life lived outside the borders of the American Dream.

Wendy (Michelle Williams) is a young woman on her way to Alaska and her hope for a better life.

She's been driving in her terrible old car, carefully keeping track of every cent she'll need to get where she's going. Wendy travels with her dog Lucy, who appears to be both friend and guardian.

Wendy may sleep in her car at night, but she's still hugging the edges of civilization -- washing up in gas station bathrooms and maintaining the rituals of regular everyday life as best she can.

Early in the film, Wendy has an encounter with a group of transient kids, who travel by hopping freight trains and who sleep rough.

They have tips for Wendy about working the canneries in Alaska and they're friendly, albeit vaguely menacing; in the company of these outcasts, Wendy looks as if she's just begun to realize what she might be getting herself into.

Somewhere in smalltown Oregon, Lucy's luck changes. Her car breaks down, she gets into some trouble and she can't find her dog. What it takes to get her back on the road are encounters with several strangers, one of whom, a security guard (Wally Dalton), even helps her a little. Others she meets can't even help themselves.

Thanks to an understated but wholly extraordinary performance from Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy makes it crystal clear what it's like to live without a safety net in America. Wendy has no phone, no address, no job and no real prospects. At one point she phones her sister and gets the brush-off, making it obvious that Wendy doesn't even have family to count on.

Wendy and Lucy is a drama about loss. It's entirely character-driven, so not much of anything happens in the story, and yet it's a completely harrowing film. File this one under that new genre called "America: What the hell happened?"

Wendy and Lucy was voted the Best Movie of 2008 by the Toronto Film Critics' Association, and it has turned up on the 'Best of' lists from critics around North America.

It was named to the Top 10 of 2008 by the American Film Institute. In further awards news, the dog who plays Lucy is actually filmmaker Kelly Reichardt's own dog, and that canine was awarded the Palme Dog at Cannes.
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