Film: Wild at Heart

Overview

As Lula, (the impeccable Laura Dern), along with the man she loves, Sailor, (the fearless Nicolas Cage), flees from her traumatic family past, her deranged mother (Dern’s real life mother, the Oscar nominated, Diane Ladd) and all the weirdos she keeps sending to kill Sailor, our minds are blown and our hearts stolen. Again.

Unruly, raw, uninhibited, wickedly funny, and uncompromisingly honest in both its depictions of violence and love, it unfolds like a demented romantic comedy, a darkly imaginative, pedal to the metal road movie and a contemporary, unflinching western, a nightmare and a wonderful dream, all at once.

The great’s, late’s, Lynch’s 5th film won the Palm D’ Or for Best Film at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, although it was his most controversial and divisive cinematic dream. Yet 35 years, as the world around us seems more and more “wild at heart and weird on top”, seemingly succumbing to various, outrageous weirdos, it may well be reconsidered as his most underappreciated, ageless, ever timely one, and the most direct line to his unique mind and worldview.