Certification. 18
Running Time. 2 hours 5 mins
Director. David Lynch
Cast. Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Isabella Rossellini, Harry Dean Stanton.
Rating. 62%
David Lynch’s fascination with The Wizard Of Oz was apparent in almost every project he touched, but undoubtedly reached obsession status in Wild At Heart.
At its core, Wild At Heart is a road movie that follows a young couple - Lula Fortune (Laura Dern) and Sailor (a refreshingly engaging Nicolas Cage) - on the run from her mother (Dianne Ladd) and the array of miscreants hired to find them.
Trading in the stock Americana of the road movie, The Wizard Of Oz and Elvis Presley, the film struggles to transcend iconography and reach the arresting strangeness that Lynch usually located with ease. Yes, Wild At Heart is full of startling and grotesque images, but in many ways, his adaptation (of a Barry Gifford novel) feels like one of the director’s most conventional outputs.
Indeed, the film ends on one of the most optimistic notes of his career, with the Good Witch, Glenda (Sheryl Lee) herself making an appearance to implore the on-again off-again lovers not to give up on what their hearts both know to be true.
It’s ironic that Lynch won the Palme d’Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival for a film that few would place in the upper echelon of his body of work. At best, Wild At Heart is entertaining and energetic, with charmingly exaggerated performances. At worst, it is shallow, overindulgent and uncomfortably misogynistic as the film all too frequently heads towards exploitation, particularly regarding the female characters.
Like Blue Velvet, this film polarised audiences. Wild At Heart wasn’t a success on release and revisiting the film today, it’s easy to see why it turned so many people off with lurid scenes of sex and violence that repeatedly come off as juvenile. But throughout it all the audience remains engaged, primarily thanks to the chemistry and charisma of the two leads.
“This whole world is wild at heart, and weird on top.”
Something of a career motto for David Lynch.
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