Review of Wild at Heart (1990) by Drew S — 25 Jan 2011

Dark, twisted, erotic, comic, disturbed...this is what happens when you give David Lynch a love story to direct haha. Any fan of his other films will know what to expect and if they're likely to enjoy this or not. People not acquanted with his strange and often unsettling style may find this an acquired taste.

Nicholas Cage is at his crazy best as the free living murderer on the run, and Laura Dern is smoking as his highly sexed, Wizard of Oz obsessed girlfriend. In fact, the iconic film is referenced often in this film, in an interesting twist to Lynch's signature perversion of all things middle-America, and this helps the film both find narration (Laura Dern's character sees it as her escapism from her abusive past) but also take the film off in different dream-like directions that Lynch does so well.

Even though the story is very different from Twin Peaks, there is a certain similar vibe here, generated by having some of the same actors crop up, and the always beautiful score by Badalementi, who did the original Twin Peaks theme.

Overall I liked this. Perhaps it wasn't quite as consistently good as Blue Velvet, and some of the scenes seemed mor effectively realised than others, but it is certainly up there with some of Lynch's better films, and I'ld recommend it to any fan of his weird and wonderful mind.