Wild at Heart (1990)

Young lovers Sailor and Lula run from the variety of weirdos that Lula's mom has hired to kill Sailor.

Director:

David Lynch

Writers:

Barry Gifford (novel), David Lynch (screenplay)

Stars:

Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 4 wins & 10 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Nicolas Cage	...	Sailor Ripley
Laura Dern	...	Lula Fortune
Willem Dafoe	...	Bobby Peru
J.E. Freeman	...	Marcelles Santos
Crispin Glover	...	Dell
Diane Ladd	...	Marietta Fortune
Calvin Lockhart	...	Reggie
Isabella Rossellini	...	Perdita Durango
Harry Dean Stanton	...	Johnnie Farragut
Grace Zabriskie	...	Juana Durango
Sherilyn Fenn	...	Girl in Accident
Marvin Kaplan	...	Uncle Pooch
William Morgan Sheppard	...	Mr. Reindeer (as W. Morgan Sheppard)
David Patrick Kelly	...	Dropshadow
Freddie Jones	...	George Kovich

Storyline

Lula's psychopathic mother goes crazy at the thought of Lula being with Sailor, who just got free from jail. Ignoring Sailor's probation, they set out for California. However their mother hires a killer to hunt down Sailor. Unaware of this, the two enjoy their journey and themselves being together... until they witness a young woman dying after a car accident - a bad omen.

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Plot Keywords:

avant garde | surrealism | domineering mother | forbidden love | nonlinear timeline | 

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Taglines:

A Love Story

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime | Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

17 August 1990 (USA)

Also Known As:

David Lynch's Wild at Heart

Filming Locations:

243 South Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$9,500,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$14,560,247

Company Credits

Production Co:

PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Propaganda Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

125 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film was completed one day before it debuted at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival in the 2,400-seat Grand Auditorium. After the screening, it received "wild cheering" from the audience. When Jury President Bernardo Bertolucci announced Wild at Heart as the Palme d'Or winner at the awards ceremony, the boos almost drowned out the cheers with film critic Roger Ebert leading the vocal detractors. Barry Gifford remembers that there was a prevailing mood that the media was hoping Lynch would fail.

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Goofs

(at around 10 mins) Lula talks about her Uncle Pooch dying in a car accident while vacationing in Myrtle Beach. As she speaks,a car is shown crashing down a mountainous ravine and bursting into flames. The goof: Myrtle Beach is a flat seaside town and there are no mountains or ravines like those shown for hundreds of miles around.

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Quotes

Lula: You got me hotter than Georgia asphalt.

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Crazy Credits

The ending credits play over footage of Sailor singing "Love Me Tender" to Lula, rather than a black screen.

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Alternate Versions

To avoid an X-rating in the USA, David Lynch added a smoky haze and spark impact to the shots where Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe) shoots himself with a shotgun and blows his head off. The second shot has the same smoky haze on it to hide the chunk of his head flying though the air. The effect made the removal of his head from his body less clear and muted the blood and gore and got the movie an "R" rating. The uncut version was released outside the USA, but since the David Lynch-approved DVD came out in the U.S. (the shot was altered there), the censored transfer has been used on worldwide DVD releases as well, while most of the versions with the bloodier version of the scene have gone out of print. Oddly enough, the more graphic version is still shown in TV airings in the U.S. on the Sundance Channel.

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Connections

References Blue Velvet (1986)

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Soundtracks

In The Heat Of The Jungle
Written and Performed by Chris Isaak
Published by Isaak Music Publishing Co. (ASCAP)
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Records Inc.
by Arrangement with Warner Special Products

User Reviews

A typical Lynch film - I'll leave it to you to decide if that's a good thing or bad thing

Almost two years after beating a man to death in a fight, Sailor is released from prison and restarts his relationship with Lula - much to the disapproval of Lula's mother. When Sailor and Lula break parole and head for California, she hires a hitman after them to kill Sailor. Unaware of this, Sailor and Lula continue west, encountering all manner of weird and wonderful people on their way.

I first tried to watch this when it first came on television, but I was watching it with family and felt uncomfortable with the nudity and turned it off. Years later I have seen many other Lynch films, have loved Twin Peaks and looked forward to a chance to watch it. I sat to watch it aware of the basic plot and that it was to be full of references to Wizard of Oz, but I wasn't prepared for the biggest surprise - that it just wasn't that good a film. I am not adverse to Lynch's universe of weird characters but I don't like it when I get the feeling that he is simply being weird for the sake of it.

Certainly that seemed to be the case here: the plot is so loose and meaningless to almost be pointless even as a frame for weirdness - which is what it really is. The references to Wizard of Oz are all there but, rather than being part of the film, they are stuck in with clumsiness all the way - they seem like a gimmicky afterthought rather than a carefully scripted part of the film. The plot is more a collected of the usual Lynchian weirdness and gore. Sometimes this works really well when it is framed within an engaging film, but here the characters, images and action are all just left drifting in a relatively empty film. It's a shame because I really like many of Lynch's films and was looking forward to this, but even I am forced to admit that this film just isn't that good.

The cast features many of Lynch regulars, but many seem to be lost due to the fact that they haven't got the material to do their stuff within. Cage is really quite good despite his simple character. Dern is given more to do but comes across rather hammy with it - her character should have had the emotional buy in to the film but she can't deliver it. Turns from Dafoe, Stanton, Rossellini, Fenn, Glover and others are all good but they exist as free floating weird characters rather than part of the film in the way I would have liked.

Overall this is a typical Lynchian film in it's imagery, weird characters, strange story and violent/sexual content. Usually these would be good things in this context but here they aren't put together very well creating a film that, although worth seeing and weirdly fascinating, is not actually that good a film.