The “Wendy” of the title is actually one you probably know—the young girl who befriends Peter Pan and has adventures with the Lost Boys and Captain Hook in J.M. Barrie’s classic and its many adaptations. Wendy (Devin France) lives with her twin brothers James (Gavin Naquin) and Douglas (Gage Naquin) above a restaurant. In the film’s prologue, a boy named Thomas (Krzysztof Meyn) is celebrating his birthday at the joint with a plate of bacon, as you do, and gets angry as the old folk tell him how he’ll eventually be one of them, working menial jobs and losing their sense of wonder. He breaks emotionally, running out to the passing train outside, and disappearing. A baby Wendy (Tommie Lynn Milazzo) sees a figure on top of the train, imagining Thomas has run off to whatever land of wonder this magical vehicle stops at.
Years later, Wendy and her brothers gather the courage to jump on that train, where they meet a boy named Peter (Yashua Mack) and are taken to an island where children run and play, never aging under the guidance of a mythical underwater creature they call mother. As long as they keep hope and imagination alive, they will never grow old. Even Thomas, looking the same as the day he disappeared, is there. As references to Barrie’s work worm their way into “Wendy,” the kids are forced to fight to keep their youth and protect their mother—you know the kinds of things that would keep children up at night, worrying about what being a grown-up will be like and hoping nothing happens to their mommy.
People who take to “Wendy” will be drawn in by a filmmaking energy that tries to match its youthful cast. As the kids scream and jump and run, the camera swoops and flies with them, accompanied by a majestic score by Dan Romer. There are echoes of Terrence Malick in “Wendy” too, but it’s hard to shake that the film feels most of all like a riff on Zeitlin’s breakthrough. Again, we have people on the edge of society, unknown child actors, magical realism—it seems hard to imagine anyone who didn’t respond to “Beasts” somehow thinking this one works, and even fans of that film may be startled at the repetition.
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