.png)
WILD AT HEART is the American Dream ablaze in hot pink, an enchanting compendium of cinematic parables where EASY RIDER meets THE WIZARD OF OZ. It scorches through the tenuous fibers of illusory chimera with great effect, capturing exhaustion and disillusionment as poignantly as it does ardent ambition. Escapist adventure decays into desperate survival for two absconding paramours. Lula and Sailor are young lovers forced to elope from the maniacally domineering Marietta, Lula’s mob-associated mother. Marietta is murderously spiteful and envious of her daughter and vehemently objects to her relationship with Sailor, resorting to murder in order to absolve it.
Lula is an oversexed child, flighty and abstract in the way she digests and interprets the world around her. It is how she copes, behavior learned in subliminal defense against past dissociative trauma. She chooses to live in the romanticism innate to her heart, always dreaming and often lapsing into visions as ambiguous as they are portentous. Her quirkiness is endearing to Sailor, who remarks upon it often with gentle amusement. Lula is willfully naïve, clinging to the vestiges of a long departed happy childhood. Sailor is jaded and cynical, having done and seen too much from his peripheral involvement with Marietta’s gang. Lula is initially unaware of his past association and the threats that it poses to their welfare. As threats continue to significantly rise all around them, Sailor confesses the truth, shaking what Lula’s heretofore impervious perception of her parents and herself. They are destitute and deflated by the time they reach Texas and are forced to sojourn with a lot of maverick eccentrics. Helming the gang is the sinister Bobby Peru, a sadistic mob associate hellbent on framing Sailor and tormenting Lula. The fantasy has evaporated, leaving only a sordid residue of failed dreams and aspirations. Can their love survive, now bereft of its magenta glean?
WILD AT HEART is a disorienting fairytale from start to finish, always thematically off-beat in Lynchian fashion as it shuffles from comedic to tragic, each turn just as curiously bizarre as the last. Everybody save for Lula and Sailor are eccentric caricatures hyperbolized to cartoon effect. Ladd’s performance is electric and unhinged, very much in the vein of her friend and mentor Shelley Winters; Dafoe is unequivocally terrifying, leaning into his role with wanton panache. Dern and Cage are phenomenal together and have enviable chemistry, well-intentioned but rebellious as they obstinately charge westward in search of freedom. Surprisingly lighter fare from Lynch brimming unexpected with sagacious nuance.
Comments