In 1970 Barbara Loden made a move about a woman drifter; she wrote, directed and starred in it, and the results are surprising and some would say brilliant. Definitely not Hollywood. Wanda is passive, indifferent, promiscuous, and lazy; she seems stupid and completely lacking in agency. Is her incompetence just incompetence or should we see it as some critics did, as "resistance of the weak"-a total refusal to meet society's narrow expectations for a working-class wife, mother, and woman? The filmmaker leaves that up to the viewer. Wanda's corner of the U.S. is certainly not "great." Everything is dirty, dilapidated, and ugly, from her miserable home near a coal dump to motels in which she spends nights with random men, garish churches, malls in which she buys hideous clothes, city centers with boarded-up businesses, and bars--including the one where she has an unusual first encounter with Mr. Dennis. Mr. Dennis, brilliantly acted by Michael Higgins, gives a definite new direction to her life. This movie will not please everyone. Some viewers will not find Wanda very "relatable" or engaging; and the pace of the movie is slow and episodic until she meets Mr. Dennis, but even then, it moves at an odd rhythm. The role of chance recalls Detour, a phenomenal low-budget film noir, and Wanda's abjectly-aimless rebellion may remind some viewers of Agnes Varda's Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond), though with a less terrible ending. But this movie is unique and sui generis.
