In rural eastern Pennsylvania, unhappy housewife Wanda Goronski in curlers leaves her children, gets divorced, and quits her job. She heads off on her own and gets involved in dangerous situations.

This is truly indie. It has the energy of its guerilla filmmaking. I only wish that Barbara Loden is a bigger actress or this film could launch her into a bigger acting or filmmaking career. It would have been great to have Sundance during her time. This is the exact kind of film that needs promotion from a specialized film festival. Barbara died too young. I wonder if she could have gained more traction later in life as an indie filmmaker.

This may be an independent film, but it made a big impact, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and it appears in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Basically, Wanda Goronski (Barbara Loden, also writing and directing) is an unhappy housewife in rural eastern Pennsylvania. She has been sleeping living with her sister (Dorothy Shupenes) and sleeping on the sofa after leaving the house. She takes a walk across a field of coal before hitching a ride, she arrives late for a court hearing for her divorce. She relinquishes her rights to her children and grants her husband (Jerome Thier) a divorce. After being terminated from her job at a sewing factory, she has a one-stand with a man and runs away with him, only for him to abandon her at an ice cream shop. Nearly penniless, Wanda falls asleep in a movie theatre, and she finds she has been robbed when she woken by the cleaner. During the night, in a bar, a man (Michael Higgins) has knocked the bartender unconscious and is robbing the bar. Wanda arrives at the bar during the robbery, mistakes the man, Norman Dennis, for the bartender, and uses the restroom. She desperately clings to the man, he is a criminal on the run, and unable to rid himself of Wanda, so he takes her with him. Wanda eventually learns of the details of his lifestyle, but she decides to stay with Norman, whom she calls "Mr. Dennis". Wanda spends some time on the road with Norman, and he becomes physically and emotionally abusive to her. He sends her shopping in a mall for new clothes while he robs cars in the parking lot. They subsequently visit the Holy Land USA theme park, where Norman meets with his Christian father (Charles Dosinan),whom he is courteous and respectful toward. After this, they visit a bank where Norman plans a robbery, and he convinces Wanda to be his lookout and getaway driver. The scheme starts with Norman holding a bank manager and his family hostage, the family are tied up, while Norman kidnaps the bank manager. Norman arrives at the bank, holding the manager and other people at gunpoint in the lobby, forcing them to open the bank vault. Wanda is late due to a police car pulling her over for speeding. By the time Wanda arrives at the scene, the robbery has already gone awry, as security have called the police, they tell him to give up, but are forced to shoot and kill him. Wanda watches from the street as police descend and onlookers observe. Alone again, Wanda hitches a ride with a man who attempts to sexually assault her. She escapes and runs through the woods. At nightfall, Wanda arrives at a backwoods roadhouse, where strangers supply her with food, alcohol, and cigarettes. Also starring Frank Jourdano as the soldier Valerie Manches as the girl in the roadhouse. Loden does a very good job as both filmmaker and actress, giving a realistic performance as the woman who becomes an outsider after inadvertently getting involved with a neurotic crook. It is a very simple story of a woman living a meaningless domestic lifestyle who ends unintentionally on the wrong side of the law, although it is very simplistic in its lowkey filming style and setup, I can see why it made an impact, especially being from a female director, it is an engaging and interesting drama. Very good!

Dejected and dispirited unemployed housewife Wanda Goronski (a heartbreaking portrayal by Barbara Loden, who also wrote, produced, and directed) walks out on her husband and kids. Wanda's already hard and thankless life only gets worse after she decides to hook up with antsy and abusive small-time criminal Norman Dennis (a fine and credible performance by Michael Higgins).

Loden not only astutely captures the quiet despair and raw just barely hanging on by a thread desperation found in the lives of downtrodden people who have been neglected and banished to the margins in society, but also accomplishes the remarkable feat of presenting said individuals as believably flawed warts'n'all human beings who are never overly sentimentalized or crudely caricatured. Moreover, Loden's excellent use of such authentically seedy locations as cheap motels and grungy bars provides a fascinating exploration of the seamy underbelly of American culture. Wanda makes for an interesting main character: Pathetic, but far too meek and passive to be genuinely pitiable, the sort of browbeaten person with no basic will to live, but still nonetheless keeps plugging away more out of habit and instinct than anything else. In addition, this film makes a potent and poignant point on how a combination of poor self-esteem and the lack of a good education can doom a person to a miserable lesser existence, with Wanda left at the depressing and devastating conclusion no better than she started out. Plainly shot and starkly directed, this spare, sad, and haunting film packs a powerful emotional gut punch.