Kelly Reichardt, Wendy and Lucy

61st CANNES FILM FESTIVAL: Independent filmmaker Kelly
Reichardt scored a major success at Cannes with the world
premiere of her latest feature, Wendy and Lucy which stars
Michelle Williams. The disarmingly unpretentious and low-key
Reichardt speaks of living in Queens, teaching, her mentor
Todd Haynes and why her bare-bones way of filmmaking attracted
for the first time a name like Williams, who proved she was
very much in the Heath Ledger mindset of the movie's the thing
as she hauled electrical equipment after takes, didn't bathe
for two weeks, slept in her costume. All to play Wendy who
with her dog Lucy (who is actually Reichardt's dog, last seen
in her Old Joy) is on the road from Indiana to Alaska when
an unexpected stop in a small Northwest town shows what can
happen to those who are down and out in Bush's America.

•