Wanda
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“I’m just no good”
Overview
The one and only film written, directed by and starring Barbara Loden, Wanda is an undersung masterpiece of independent American cinema. After losing custody of her kids in a divorce case, Wanda (Loden) wanders through bars and hotels scattered about her sooty side of Pennsylvania with a series of callous men who keep abandoning her. One such guy, Norman (Michael Higgins), ropes our apathetic heroine into bank robbery.
Why See This Film
Winner of the Pasinetti Award for Best Foreign Film at Venice and often compared to the cinema of John Cassavetes, Wanda brings a very unique and rarely depicted kind of passive drifter (which Loden has admitted is largely based on herself) to the screen. Created by a crew of four on a shoe-string budget in freewheeling, largely improvised vérité style, this film, like its protagonist, glides about the strange countryside with an utterly transfixing listless freedom.
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