Movie Details
| Title: | Wanda | |
| Director: | Barbara Loden | |
| Year: | 1970 | |
| Genre: | Drama | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.13.25 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.13.25 | Blu-ray | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2025 roll: 3 / 2 spine: 965 (part of CC40) This one is actually a double dip as I had a copy on my hard drive before I bought this massive 40-film set. Life seemed to want me to see this a few years ago when David Simon mentioned it as the type of film Maggie Gylenhaal's character might make in The Deuce, then it was announced by Criterion and everyone started talking about it. Well, I didn't watch it then but I finally am now. A down-and-out woman wanders around until crossing paths with a criminal and joins him for a time. This is definitely one of those drab downer movies that became en vogue in the 70s. Something akin to Five Easy Pieces where the protagonist doesn't seem to want anything from society or anyone else and society doesn't want anything to do with them, except when Jack Nicholson does it he's a rebel and when a woman does it it's just incredibly sad. You get the sense that this woman's drawn to this criminal because even though he's unstable and rude and somewhat abusive, he pays attention to her. Like a drop of water to a starving plant, even though it's unhealthy she likes it because it's better than nothing. The movie is very slow and not much happens, but I found myself more drawn into this than Monte Carlo before it. The climax of the film is also heart-wrenching in its own low budget minimalist way. At first I thought Loden wasn't doing much but by the end I found her performances to be very powerful. Michael Higgins' performance is great as well. A lot of his line deliveries remind me of Bill Hader's tough guy accent. "Get over there. Stand there. Make me a sandwich." I don't know that I'll be in a hurry to watch this again but I'm keen to check out the special features sometime because something about this was very captivating. |
