Delayed Reaction: Wanda

Premise: An aimless woman becomes an accidental companion of a bank robber.

 

I wish I had more to say about this movie. It's the lone film from Barbara Loden (who also starred in it) as a director and is a rather famous independent film from 1970. It upended a lot of Hollywood norms at the time with its improvised dialogue and verité style. The fact that it was directed by a woman and the depiction of Wanda as listless and passively sexual were both highly uncommon for that era. The movie almost feels out of place in time.

 

I've been wanting to get around to this for a while. I'm intrigued by the legend of Barbara Loden, who died only a decade after this. It's odd that even though she earned decent praise for the film (it won a major award at the Venice Film Festival), she never directed another movie. I suppose that's not all that odd for that era. It was more expensive to make movies then. She's often compared to John Cassavetes, and he was known for taking acting jobs to later pay for his movies. Perhaps Loden didn't have the stomach or fame to do that. She definitely would've been a Sundance fixture if nothing else these days.

 

The movie is ok. I like Loden's performance. She's very reserved. She isn't doing much more than she must. The plot moves at her pace and there's almost something funny to the way she just drifts from one adventure to the next. I half expected her to be sleeping in the backseat of a car that gets stolen with her in it. I'd label this more as educational watching than purely entertaining, but I found it worthwhile.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend