Wild at Heart

Wild at Heart (1990) is about a man leaving prison and running away with his girlfriend. Sailor served time for killing a man who attacked him, in self defence. Lula is waiting when he gets out. Her mother Marietta is against the relationship and hires men to kill him. The two run for California. Everyone they meet on the road is strange: a girl dying at the scene of a crash looking for a clip from her hair, a man in a motel telling an incomprehensible story, a man named Bobby Peru who draws them into a robbery. The film refers constantly to The Wizard of Oz: red shoes, a good witch, a road. Lynch places that fairy tale inside a violent film. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the decision was booed in the auditorium; it was one of the most contested results of that year. It is adapted from Barry Gifford's novel. Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern star. Cage's snakeskin jacket is used like a character and the jacket was genuinely his. Willem Dafoe's Bobby Peru is the most disturbing figure in it, and one motel room scene is very hard to sit through. Diane Ladd is Laura Dern's actual mother and plays her mother here; she was nominated for an Oscar. The violence is sudden and deliberately graphic; the opening scene establishes that in the first minute. It runs 125 minutes. Good for: Lynch, road films, and black humour. Less good for: the violence and sexual content are very explicit and the tone keeps sliding.