Wanda (played by Loden herself) lives with her husband and two children in a shack in a dreary coal mining area. Because she leaves the housework undone, her husband files for divorce. Wanda gives up her previous life, relinquishes custody of her children - "they are better off with him" - loses her job and drifts through poor Pennsylvania on her own. When she meets a petty crook in a bar, she allows herself to be drawn into a bank robbery. Barbara Loden's unsentimental directorial debut remained her only feature-length film and is now regarded as one of the most important works of 1970s US independent cinema.

The fullness of Wanda, her complexities and nuances, springs from Loden’s complete embodiment of the character, spun from but a few components into a woman simultaneously so realistic, yet unknowable, making this one of cinema’s great performances. - Elissa Suh, Mubi Notebook