Dear Wendy
| Dear Wendy | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Thomas Vinterberg |
| Produced by | Sisse Graum Olsen |
| Written by | Lars von Trier |
| Starring |
Jamie Bell Bill Pullman Michael Angarano Alison Pill |
| Music by | Benjamin Wallfisch |
| Distributed by | Wellspring Media (US) |
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Release date
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Running time
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105 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | DKK 50,000,000 (est.) |
Dear Wendy is a 2004 film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, and starring Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, Mark Webber and Alison Pill.
It is a co-production between Denmark, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. The script was written by Lars von Trier.
The film was a box office bomb and received overwhelming negative reviews, frequently being compared unfavourably to von Trier's award-winning Dogville, released the previous year. Despite the negative critical response, Vinterberg won the Silver St. George for Best Director at the 27th Moscow International Film Festival.
The teenage members of a group of self-proclaimed pacifists decide to carry guns. They call themselves The Dandies. Their club is assembled from the young misfits in a fictional small American mining town, Electric Park. It is started after the main character, Dick (Jamie Bell), buys what he thinks is a toy gun. His co-worker tells him the gun is real, and the two start shooting and studying guns in their spare time. They later recruit other outcasts, young men and one young woman who do not, or cannot, work in the mine, including one boy in leg braces and his younger brother Freddie.
The film is framed by Dick's voiceover, resembling a love letter to his gun Wendy. He is the chosen leader of the group and tells them that their group is a "social experiment" and will reveal their true nature.
The script shares characteristics with earlier von Trier scripts, depicting violence and race relations in the United States in a highly stylized, exaggerated manner and mixing realistic and fantastic elements.
Though more substantial than the bare sound stage of Dogville, Electric Park is reminiscent of a western set on the back lot of a movie studio. The Dandies spend most of their time on this one block or in an abandoned mining shaft that they decorate and call the Temple.
The Dandies have several quirks and idiosyncratic rules. A Dandy may never brandish his weapon in public, but instead gains self-confidence simply knowing he is carrying a concealed weapon. As a badge of membership, they cultivate a 'Brideshead Stutter' (a reference to the character Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited, who also adopts a deliberate stammer). They refuse to say the word 'killing' and instead refer to it as 'loving.' They live up to their name, Dandies, by dressing in colorful, outdated clothing, including vests, long jackets and hats. Though they regularly shoot targets (bull's eyes are oddly common), they spend just as much time playing gun-related games, watching instructional videos and studying diagrams. They use their own personal guns, all antiques with names and back stories, more as props than weapons. Even when they do load and shoot their weapons, they favor style over function (for example, Dick decides to shoot from the hip, Susan uses two guns and works on indirect hits using ricocheted bullets).
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