Featured Movies
Partners
Wild at Heart
Star-crossed lovers Sailor and Lula join Elvis and the Wizard Of Oz in this deranged, stylish and award-winning road movie from cult director David Lynch
By 1990, David Lynch was the foremost surrealist of US cinema, a position cemented by Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and his long-running cult TV series 'Twin Peaks', a bizarre deconstructed soap. As a director-for-hire, he'd also displayed versatility for tackling more mainstream fare as evinced by The Elephant Man and Dune, with plaudits for the former and critical brickbats for the latter. Lynchian cinema was more popular in Europe than on his home turf, and came to be synonymous with the perception of the director himself, a former all-American boy (and latterly, Ronald Reagan admirer) distorted by a funhouse mirror to resemble, as Elephant Man producer Mel Brooks wryly observed, "Jimmy Stewart from Mars". The repressed, ultra-conservative "I Like Ike" generation had some very peculiar stuff in its closet. Lynch made it his currency. After 'Twin Peaks', expectations were at fever pitch for Lynch's next project. The director came across Barry Gifford's novella 'Wild At Heart' while still in its proofing stages and fashioned a loose adaptation in six days. Unusually for Lynch, the script's pretty straightforward and chronological; as Wild At Heart star Dafoe noted later, "I was always shocked at how logical it was - its world was so complete." But as ever, El Diablo's in the details. Here, Blue Velvet's yuppie nightmare becomes a white trash ticket to Hell: reckless Sailor Ripley (Cage, in full-on Elvis mode) loves hopeless romantic Lula Fortune (Dern), which drives Marietta Fortune (played by Dern's real-life mother Ladd) round the twist. After her lascivious advances to Sailor are spurned, she sends a hitman after him, who Sailor kills - graphically, smashing his skull to splinters. On release from prison and defying his probation for "manslaughter", Sailor and lusty Lula hit the pedal for California, encountering all manner of Lynchian freaks en route. Unbeknown to them, Lula's insanely jealous mother has hired seedy PI Johnnie Farragut (Stanton) and various thugs to hunt them down, culminating in a stand-off in one-horse-town 'Big Tuna' with evil gunman Bobby Peru (Dafoe). A dream turning inexorably to nightmare, Wild At Heart's an all-out assault on the senses, aided immeasurably by Angelo Badalamenti's fantastically smoky score. But the director's trademark oddities (from obese prom queens and cockroach-bothering relatives to Ladd's hellish, red lipstick-covered face) seem forced, and unlike Eraserhead there's scant emotional heart. With deliberately over-the-top performances (from Ladd and Defoe, particularly), characterisation always takes a back seat to knowing iconography, along with campy references to The Wizard Of Oz - Dern imagines Ladd as the Wicked Witch of the West, while 'Twin Peaks' star Sheryl Lee portrays Glinda. Nevertheless, amid catcalls and cheers - and much to Lynch's bemusement - the film won the Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival; a fitting opener to a decade which would see the director's post-modern riff on American pop-culture become de rigeur in independent US cinema, ultimately achieving more cross-over successes than Lynch ever imagined. Verdict Lynch puts the odd in 'odyssey' with this exhilarating thrill ride, featuring astonishing visuals and a terrific score. But the result's mostly "empty at heart and hollow on top". |
