I first found Wanda (1970) a bit difficult to get into. The opening is slow, observing workers and families in close proximity to a coal plant in rural Pennsylvania, which seems as depressing and barren as the industrial landscapes in Red Desert. Here, Wanda (Barbara Loden) wakes up on a friend’s couch and is late for her divorce proceedings at court. In no doubt a rebuke to accepted American cultural morality at the time (and even now), Wanda doesn’t seem to care about her marriage or her children, leaving them to her husband’s new beau. Instead, Wanda continues to drink and wake up in a hotel after a one night stand. There’s something both passive and uncertain about her character, which Loden is completely inside of in her deeply felt performance, a drifting presence who winds up following a cigar-chomping, onion-hating bank-robber named Mr Dennis (Michael Higgins, also great; he comes off as a cross between Walter Matthau and Chris Cooper). As the film becomes a road movie, it feels unsentimental in the relationship that builds between Wanda and Mr Dennis, one of convenience ultimately with odd moments of connection. In this very low-budget production shot on different locations, which utilisies plenty of non-actors for the rest of the cast, there is a depressingly bland, realistic portrait of small town American life in the late 1960s. I eventually found Wanda compelling, even if it kept me at a distance with its aimless protagonist, a despondent portrait of someone tying themselves to different situations to define themselves. Sadly, it felt like if Loden had the financial backing and did not die of cancer at the end of the 1970s that she would have made further great, interesting movies. Available to stream on the Criterion Channel. Recommended.
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