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Dear Wendy Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: Not Rated (includes some sexual references, language, and gun violence) Genre: Drama Theater release: September 23, 2005 by Zentropa Studios Directed by: Thomas Vinterberg Runtime: 1 hour 45 minutes Cast: Jamie Bell (Dick), Bill Pullman (Krugsby), Alison Pill (Susan), Danso Gordon (Sebastian), Michael Angarano (Freddie) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Dick loves Wendy. As this film opens, he's writing her a love letter, recounting the story of their romance from fateful first meeting through marriage and beyond, to the day when their love is put to the test by the arrival of another man.

Right back to Shakespeare, love stories end one of two ways—in weddings or in death. Dear Wendy is more Romeo & Juliet than Midsummer Night's Dream, moving past the "happy ever after" of romantic comedy right through to the "till death us do part" of tragedy, and the big questions of choice and destiny: did we choose our love, or did love choose us? Tragic lovers only know that once their fates are joined, once they abandon themselves to such an all-consuming love, everything else follows with relentless inevitability.

Jamie Bell plays a young loner named Dick

That's how Dick loves Wendy; helplessly, obsessively, tragically. Dear Wendy is story of star-crossed lovers that's as ancient as it is familiar. With one crucial variation on the theme: Wendy is a gun. Specifically, a 6.35mm six-shooter, a sweet little double action pearl handle revolver with internal hammer who makes a new man of Dick, turns a weak and sensitive loner into a man with confidence and authority. A good woman or the right gun can do that.

Dick (Jamie Bell) refuses to follow in the footsteps of the town's real men and work in the mine. He stocks shelves in the corner grocery and carts around a toy gun from a second-hand shop, comforting himself with smug judgments of the town's other inhabitants—as much an echo of writer Lars von Trier's Dogville as the story's stylized small-town setting. It's not until he hooks up with the gun-loving Stevie that Dick learns the true power of what he carries in his pocket. His life begins to change. He's a natural shooter who can plant six shots in the center of a target without aiming or even thinking. Wendy and Dick are made for each other.

Problem is, one of Dick's strategies for moral superiority has been to call himself a pacifist—a label Stevie quickly claims as a way of cementing their friendship. But they decide that's no problem at all: their firearms will be carried but not brandished. Why bother? Just packing heat makes them walk taller—of course they're never going to use their weapons. It's a naive rationalization that contains the seed of their eventual tragedy.

Dick (center) is strangely drawn to guns, despite his pacifist views

"Pacifists with guns." It's an idea that's just too good not to share, especially since there are others out there who need what they've discovered. After all, Stevie notes, "We're not the only losers in Electric Park." So they form The Dandies, complete with secret passwords and symbols, rituals and pledges, even dress-up clothes and a secret clubhouse they fix up in an abandoned part of the mine. It's got everything you could want in a secret club for kids. Big kids. Kids with guns.

Of course, as Ibsen taught us, a gun on the mantle in Act One must be used before the curtain comes down on Act Three. Complications arise, and sudden violence escalates into a bloody Butch Cassidy / Wild Bunch showdown in the town square, triggered by a tragic misunderstanding.

Well, not exactly tragic. This sad-fated tale doesn't actually aim for the emotional catharsis of tragedy. Its tongue is mostly in its cheek, and it's plenty cheeky. Dogville is to Dear Wendy as A Clockwork Orange is to Doctor Strangelove. The "I can walk" climax is a direct nod to that other over-the-top satire of the American weapons fetish: this movie could easily be subtitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Gun." Everything is played with a brash style and ironic tone that signals satire more than sentiment: Dear Wendy doesn't want to break our heart, it wants to poke us in the eye or slap us upside the head.

Bill Pullman as the cop Krugsby

This is the type of movie that makes Americans mad—which no doubt makes Vinterberg and von Trier perfectly happy. The not-so-melancholy Danes are in mischief-maker mode, court jesters whose cinematic smackdown chooses provocation over subtlety. Some reviewers will find the movie glib, its characters, situations and plot developments absurd: I'm guessing the filmmakers simply find America's love affair with guns to be equally absurd, and are quite content to match style and subject.

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