![]() ![]() Every frame is carefully composed, evocatively packed with saturated colours and long slow shots. The meandering pace can get tedious at times, but cinematically it's a masterpiece. The brief appearances of Twin Peaks pin-ups Sheryl Lee and Sherilyn Fenn will have devotees salivating. His trademarks are all here - nightclubs, voodoo, whores, random incidences of utter weirdness, a fixation with the open road, rock'n'roll and American iconography - The Wizard Of Oz, Elvis, New Orleans. This is a director who knows how to get the absolute best out of his stars, giving them free reign to create characters more rounded and easier to care about than is often seen in Hollywood.Īs with most of Lynch's films, this is about more than the actors. Sterling turns from Isabella Rossellini (Lynch's partner at the time), Stanton and a grievously underused Crispin Glover complete some excellent work from a very solid ensemble cast. Dern's Lula leaves a little something to be desired she descends too easily into whininess, not quite matching up to her lover's iconic coolness (unlike, say, True Romance's Clarence and Alabama). Dafoe and Ladd, too, are impressive in their stunningly contrived evilness. The young Cage is astounding as Sailor, channelling Elvis into a performance that's all heavy romance, dark brooding intensity and perfectly delivered catch-phrases. ![]() ![]() Plot-wise it's the most linear of Lynch's films, with only a few elements that will leave you with a sense of what-the-hell-was-that-about. Will our hero survive Marietta's machinations? Will Lula keep the baby? Will love conquer?ĭespite its many dark and twisted elements, Wild At Heart is essentially a love story. Peru talks him into a bank robbery that's planned as a hit. Sailor hooks up with the fabulously toothed Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), a sinister drifter who's been hired to kill him. Holed up in their motel room in Big Tuna, Sailor and Lula grapple with her newly discovered pregnancy. Johnny's death is one of the film's weirder detours a crippled killer (Grace Zabriskie) kidnaps and tortures him, then shoots him in the head as the climax to an oversexed voodoo ritual with her big scary lover. Santos promises to dispose of Sailor but demands Johnny as his price. Meanwhile, Marietta sets her competing lovers Johnny Farragut (an always-reliable Harry Dean Stanton) and Santos (J E Freeman), a shady character who has something to do with her husband's mysterious death, on their tail. ![]() They stop off to sample the magic of New Orleans and then find themselves marooned in Big Tuna, Texas. The couple, awash with graphic sex and protestations of love, set out for sunny California in a convertible. Unfortunately for them Lula's mama, the gin-soaked, vindictive Freudian nightmare of a Southern belle, Marietta (Dern's actual mother Diane Ladd, in a genius piece of casting), is having none of it.Īfter trying to, alternately, fuck Sailor and have him killed, which works out well when he beats the assassin's brains out, Marietta is determined to keep her little girl away from the newly minted jailbird. Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) and Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern) are a just a couple of crazy kids in love. Seldom has a pack of Marlboro red looked so achingly cool but then cool, as with much of David Lynch's oeuvre, saturates every frame like the smoke from those ever-present cigarettes. Wild At Heart is not a good film for people who are trying to stop smoking. ![]()
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