Wendy and Lucy: Not Your Average Chick Flick

Wendy and Lucy (2008) is obviously a huge turn away from a typical Hollywood chick flick.  When I say "Hollywood chick flick", I am talking about the kind of film that is supposed to be all about how great it is to be a woman, but 90% of the time, that greatness only applies if you are white, rich and in high school or college, and your only goal in life is to feel pretty and get a hot boyfriend.  Clearly, this is not what Wendy and Lucy focuses on.

While Wendy's plot is very different from a typical Hollywood chick flick, I would like to focus on the technical, or cinematographic differences here, since that is a huge factor in why Wendy actually feels different from a traditional chick flick.

For starters, Wendy is very minimalistic.  Looking at a typical chick flick, say, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, where noise is constantly playing in the background.  Usually, it's a combination of pop music and really loud background noises of cars or busy students walking through high school halls.  Wendy is a relatively quiet movie, and there is (nearly) no musical accompaniment.  Traditional chick flicks are also full of stark colors and have a crisp quality to them, whereas Wendy's images are muted, slightly grainy, and the camera is allowed to go in and out of focus at times.

Camera movement itself is also very restricted in Wendy and Lucy; there are several scenes, especially when Wendy is the only character on screen, where the camera is fixated, and the scenario is left free to move along.  Characters and props move in and out of frame and focus.  Contrast that to the traditional chick flicks, in which the camera is always focused on a character, or the characters are almost always right smack in the middle of the frame.  The camera will also follow characters in order to keep everything related to the context in the frame.

With these qualities, traditional Hollywood chick flicks have a romanticized and "plastic" feel to them.  Wendy and Lucy, on the other hand, is a much calmer, quieter film, which helps it mirror real life.  This isn't to say that romanticized chick flicks are "bad", but it is nice to have a reminder of what life really can be like, especially for young women.