Review of Wild at Heart (1990) by Christa V — 15 May 2008

This movie can more or less be explained by Lula's line,"This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top.".

Everyone in the movie seems to have a bizarre passion that alienates them from what the audience will perceive as normal. I think that's why there's such a high amount of absurdity and randomness spangled throughout the greater narrative of the film.

Willem Dafoe as the sickly Bobby Peru is wonderful. He joins Robert Blake and Dennis Hopper in the category of disturbingly good antagonists created by David Lynch.

As I expected, the imagery and general cinematography are exceptional. I particularly liked the saturation of color as Lula and Sailor had sex at various points in the film. I expected that if the scene was fading into an intense yellow that it was a transition, but instead the camera came back into focus on the couple, making their forms visual analogues of the particular pigment displayed. Great way to express (sexual) passion diegetically.