In happy sum, Reichardt is one more of the current American directors, most of them still young, who are endowing our film world with pleasure and hope.

I expect there will be more stories like Wendy and Lucy's in the coming months and years. The wonder will be if they articulate their compassion and distress with such unforced eloquence.

The climax is a heartbreaker, and in its haunting finale the movie recalls no less than Mervyn LeRoy's Depression-era classic I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.

Promises a harrowing depiction of poverty and its Catch-22s and its moral judgment and shames, and delivers on that, so hey, you can’t say you didn’t know what it would be like.