Hosted by Dave King
David Lynch’s deeply nutso lovers-on-the-run opus Wild at Heart has aged well. Nicholas Cage (in a truly Nichols-Cage-y performance) and Laura Dern (in a breakout role) star as Sailor Ripley and Lula Fortune, two lovers who just can’t stay out of trouble. Hounded by Lula’s vengeful mom Marietta (an oscar-nominated Diane Ladd, Dern’s real-life mom) and psycho criminal Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), Sailor and Lula bolt North Carolina with California on their minds, but the journey will be a hard one. Replete with graphic violence, lots of sexual content, a Wizard of Oz theme, and piles of plain old weirdness, this is prime Lynch.
Wildly polarizing upon release – Roger Ebert really hated it – Wild at Heart won the Palme d’Or in 1990, made money at the box office, and has come to be recognized as a great film of its time. It was going to be slapped with an X rating before Lynch added some some smoke to obscure the effects of a shotgun on a human head. Voila … R-rated!
As Peter Travers said in a rare rave review upon the film’s release: “Imagine The Wizard of Oz with an oversexed witch, gun-toting Munchkins and love ballads from Elvis Presley, and you’ll get some idea of this erotic hellzapoppin from writer-director David Lynch. Lynch’s kinky fairy tale is a triumph of startling images and comic invention… a movie that confirms his reputation as the most exciting and innovative filmmaker of his generation.”