Wanda

Loden stars, directs and writes here in one of the classic American independent films of the 70s — a favorite of Cassavetes, and I imagine it inspired him a bit in his work during the decade. It plays like a quieter Cassavetes film, all grainy realism and incisive character study, and I can just hear Peter Falk barking all of Mr Dennis’ strange outbursts (”Why don’t you get a hat?” “No slacks! When you’re with me, no slacks!”). Every Cassavetes fan should see this. Having rejected her role as wife and mother, and without the financial means to do much else, Wanda more or less wanders from one thing to the next, from bumming around her sister’s house through coal mines to borrow money from her father, around town from shops to bars to movie matinees, and eventually in the low-key adventure that comprises most of the runtime, she takes up with and wanders about with small-time crook Mr Dennis. He’s hard around the edges and no good, but his place in life has brought him to this, too, and in a strange way they are the only new and positive thing that’s happened in the other’s life for perhaps a very long time. She softens him; he gives her some confidence. But sooner or later she’s bound to end up right where she started… A truly heartbreaking and authentic working-class/feminist examination of the kind of life too many are forced by circumstance to live.