Wild at Heart

Plot synopsis:
At a formal dinner party in Cape Fear, North Carolina, outgoing 23-year-old Elvis Presley freak Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) is accused by a goon named Bob Ray Lemon (Gregg Dandridge) of making sexual advances on Marietta Fortune (Diane Ladd), the mother of Sailor's 20-year-old girlfriend Lula (Laura Dern). Lemon announces that Marietta just paid him to kill Sailor and draws a switchblade, but Sailor defends himself, brutally beating and smashing his assailant's head into the floor all in front of Lula, Marietta, and several other people.Sailor is convicted of manslaughter and sent to the Pee Dee Correctional Facility. Upon his parole, 22 months later, despite orders from her domineering mother that she should never see Sailor again, Lula runs off to reunite with Sailor. Sailor is overjoyed to see Lula, who's brought him his prized snakeskin jacket, a symbol of his "individuality and belief in personal freedom." Sailor and Lula check into a motel, have mad, passionate sex, then go dancing at a local nightclub where he serenades her Elvis-style with "Treat Me Like a Fool." Lula asks Sailor why he never sings her "Love Me Tender," and he explains that he would only sing that song to his wife.Marietta, who in fact drunkenly propositioned Sailor in the men's bathroom that fateful night in Cape Fear, as well as threatening Sailor with the possibility that he knows "too much," is beside herself with rage. Marietta entreats private investigator and part-time boyfriend Johnnie Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton) to find Lula and bring her home. When Johnnie fails to find the couple quickly enough for her liking, Marietta also enlists the assistance of Marcelles Santos (J.E. Freeman), another boyfriend and dubious associate, to kill Sailor. Santos agrees to kill Sailor, but only on condition that he gets to kill Farragut, too, because Farragut is on to their criminal dealings. Marietta backtracks and tells Santos to leave Farragut out of it. Santos telephones gangster boss Mr. Reindeer (William Morgan Sheppard), who assigns his assassins Juana (Grace Zabriskie), Reggie (Calvin Lockhart) and Dropshadow (David Patrick Kelly) to handle the killings of both Sailor and Farragut.Having opened Pandora's Box, Marietta has a crisis of conscience and sets out to try and protect Farragut.Sailor suspects that Marietta may have put a hit out on him, and decides to break parole by leaving North Carolina with Lula and making a run for California. They first stop in New Orleans where they check into another motel, have a rainbow spectrum of sex, go out dancing, and talk about their personal lives.Marietta flies out to New Orleans and meets up with Farragut, but when he asks her whether Santos is involved in the hunt for Sailor and Lula, she denies it. Before Marietta can hustle him out of harm's way, Farragut is kidnapped by Mr. Reindeer's hit squad, who kill the hapless investigator in a sexually-charged, ritualistic manner.On the road late at night, Sailor confesses to Lula that before he met her, he used to work as a driver for Marcelles Santos. He was parked outside of her house the night it went up in flames, a witness to the conflagration in which Lula's father perished. Soon after discussing that so-called accident, Sailor and Lula encounter a car accident on the roadside where a bloodied young woman (Sherilyn Fenn) dies after stumbling out of the wrecked car. Lula says that it's a bad omen of things to come.Running short on money, Sailor and Lula stop in the small town of Big Tuna, Texas where they meet several grade-A weirdos including Juana's sinister daughter Perdita (Isabella Rossellini), local creeps Buddy (Pruitt Taylor Vince), Timmy (Frank Collison) and Sparky (Tim Lurie); crazy drunk 00 Spool (Jack Nance) and the slimy Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe).Lula reveals to Sailor that she is pregnant from all the sex they've been having for the past few weeks. Bobby, meanwhile, intuits that Lula is pregnant after he pays her a surprise visit while Sailor's away and sees that she's puked on the floor due to morning sickness. Bobby uses Sailor's concern about having to support a family to persuade him to participate in an armed robbery. Lula wants to leave Big Tuna immediately but Sailor tells her that they only need to wait one more day, keeping her in the dark about his plans with Bobby Peru. Unbeknownst to Sailor, Bobby and Perdita are both in league with Mr. Reindeer and intend to make sure that Sailor does not survive the robbery.The next day, Sailor and Bobby, with Perdita as the getaway driver, hold up a feed store. It goes badly -- a police car shows up and a cop starts questioning Perdita. Bobby shoots the two store clerks although they'd initially agreed that no one was supposed to get hurt, then turns the shotgun on Sailor and reveals that he double-crossed Sailor by giving him a gun loaded only with blanks. Perdita flees when the shooting starts and the cop opens fire on Bobby, hitting him several times. As Bobby stumbles, he accidentally blows his own head off. Sailor surrenders and is sent back to prison. Marietta and Santos arrive and take Lula away back to North Carolina.Five years and ten months later, Sailor Ripley is once again released from prison. No longer under any parole obligations and having kept in touch with Lula who has relocated to Los Angeles, Sailor decides to visit her. Marietta remains dead-set against her daughter associating with the two-time loser, but Lula confronts her mother angrily. In keeping with the story's The Wizard of Oz theme, Marietta's photo smokes to signify her diminished power when Lula throws her drink at it, just as the Wicked Witch of the West melted when Dorothy splashed her with water.Lula takes their young son, Pace (Glenn Walker Harris, Jr.) to meet Sailor when he arrives at the train station. Their encounter is awkward and Sailor decides it would be best if Lula leaves him for good. Lula is crushed but understands. After they part, Sailor is attacked and beaten up by a roving gang.Knocked unconscious, Sailor hallucinates about a hovering young lady, Glinda the Good Witch of the North (Sheryl Lee), who tells him that Lula really loves him. "Don't turn away from love!" she admonishes. Sailor comes to, apologizes to the gang members, screams Lula's name and runs back to her convertible, which is immobilized by a monster traffic jam. The family is happily reunited, and Sailor serenades Lula with Elvis Presley's song "Love Me Tender" as the end credits roll.

Tags: dark, avant garde, cruelty, comedy, murder, fantasy, cult, violence, atmospheric, flashback, absurd, psychedelic, satire, revenge, sadist

Review:
The story in brief: Sailor and Lula (excellent performances from both Nicolas Cage & Laura Dern); two broken souls passionately in love, flee the vengeful wrath of Lula's mother Marietta, who for reasons of her own will stop at nothing to ensure the lovers are kept apart.
But that fact also makes Wild at Heart a good candidate for introducing someone to Lynch.On the other hand, although it's more transparent and linear on a surface level, I'm still not sure I've figured out the multilayered, bizarre subtexts and symbolism that lie deep beneath the surface--even though I've seen it a few times now.
Combine that with excellent performances (including a hilarious bit part for Crispin Glover, one of my favorite actors/personalities), a sublimely incongruous score, and a retro, gripping, violent road trip saga cum romance that presages both Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994) and just about all of Quentin Tarantino's career, and you've got quite a film.Wild at Heart, based on a novel by Barry Gifford, is the tale of Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern), a doe-eyed, "classy white trash" couple.
To complicate matters and set up the primary conflict, we learn even before the attempted stabbing that the hit man was sent by Lula's mother, Marietta Fortune (Diane Ladd), who claimed that Sailor tried to seduce her in the bathroom (this isn't quite true, as we learn in detail later).There isn't a character in the film who isn't involved with some shady business, either presently or in the past.
Here, perhaps more than in any other work, he has found the perfect balance between the soap-operatic and the utterly bizarre--the filmic equivalent to author Harry Crews' best work.Tarantino doesn't tend to have pithy subtexts in his films, either, but they're no worse the wear for that, and when Wild at Heart takes a turn into typical Tarantino territory, Lynch is just as captivating, gritty and groovy, plus he's doing it before Tarantino himself.
Wild at Heart is probably the most conventional David Lynch film I've seen.
Supporting performances by Willem Defoe, Harry Dean Stanton, and Diane Ladd also provide liveliness that enhances the film.Although it deals with such serious subjects as murder, incest, and general family dysfunction, Wild at Heart is anything but serious.
Yet, I feel like Wild at Heart might be Lynch's most accessible film (outside The Elephant Man and The Straight Story).
Wild at Heart (1990)An inventive, crazy, abusive, drugged up, violent, sexed up, romantic, anti-romantic, road trip pseudo noir campy intense up and down silly disturbing movie.But is it any good?
If Blue Velvet was guilty of being a little too turned on by its own darkness, Wild at Heart is downright proud of presenting evil in a lurid, gleeful manner.Nevertheless, if all you want from Lynch movies is memorable surrealism, wacky characters and delirious energy, Wild at Heart still offers plenty to savor.
The weirdness of Blue Velvet and Eraserhead almost always seemed organic, like a natural outgrowth of the film - Wild at Heart seems awkwardly scrambled together.
No one goes into a David Lynch movie expecting a normal viewing experience.But what do you come out with when you've seen a movie that cross-breeds a road movie with "Bonnie and Clyde", "The Wizard of Oz" and "Blue Velvet" (Lynch's previous film)?
But enough, to be sure.As Sailor (Cage) and Lula (Dern) make their way through a bizarre world replete with oddball characters, twisted situations and nihilistic scenes of violence, it's kind of hard to juxtapose these with scenes of Glinda the Good Witch and Dern clicking her heels to get back home.
I much prefer Blue Velvet, maybe because it was new and shocking and original, whereas here Lynch seems to be copying himself, Nic Cage seems to be doing his faux-Elvis 'look at me all the time" schtick and Laura Dern just seems lost.
I got the idea that Lynch was tired, the cinematographer didn't feel like framing his compositions in a creative manner, and the editor hit the bottle a few too many times before coming into work.And another thing:  I was embarrassed for Diane Ladd and Laura Dern.
Years later I have seen many other Lynch films, have loved Twin Peaks and looked forward to a chance to watch it.
Even though I loved "Blue Velvet", I've never been a big fan of David Lynch, and this movie is one of the reasons why.
Laura Dern is so awful compared to Patricia Arquette in Lost Highway..While watching this movie though I kept thinking that it looked and felt a lot like Pulp Fiction but not nearly as interesting.
Lynch transposes "fairy tale" elements onto a mostly-familiar lovers-on-the-run story with Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern playing the sweethearts, anti-heroes trying to evade Dern's mother (the degraded Diane Ladd) but, alas, leaving havoc in their wake.
David Lynch who was making the famous TV-series Twin Peaks, decided to make a film at the same year, called Wild At Heart.
But for people who watch a lot of movies from Lynch or not, will probably find this very interesting, affecting and entertaining.It's about a criminal, called Sailor (Nicolas Cage) who runs away with her girlfriend Lula (Laura Dern) across the southern states.
We're supposed to feel sick, the world around us is sick."This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top." This is what Lula Fortune said to Sailor Ripley and it's pretty much what this movie is about.I don't know why Wild at Heart has a low rating over here, maybe because of its originality (Not that low, but compared to other Lynch-films).
While I'm not a real big fan of either Laura Dern's acting in this film, and Nick Cage's acting doesn't really strike me well either...all around it's a good movie that is fast and furious...and in the end it's a great love story as well.
As a great fan of Laura Dern and her father Bruce Dern, I have always loved their great acting skills and in this picture Laura as Lula, kept this movie really moving with fantastic WILD dancing, red hot sex scenes along with Nicolas Cage(Sailor) who tried real hard to keep up with Lula's every desire even though she had visions of the good and bad witch from the Wizard of Oz.
The terrifying emotional charge of such scenes as the car crash featuring Sherilyn Fen, or the 'say "f**k me"' scene between Bobby Peru and Lula aswell as the whole end sequence represent Lynch at his most affecting, and the film never fails to achieve his usual perfect synthesis of the extremes of dark and light; humour and dread.Lynch's fairy tale is a triumph of startling images and comic invention...Creating a bonfire of a movie that confirms his reputation as the most exciting and innovative filmmaker of his generation..
The story has Lula(Laura Dern) who loves and only wants to be with her ex-con boyfriend Sailor(Nick Cage) no matter how many times danger and death tries to get them.
So both hit the road to find happiness only they find a wicked and cruel underworld awaits them on their road of journey.This film proves life is no fairy tale as it's a dark and wild wicked madness journey for many this movie is also supported well by Willem Dafoe, Harry Dean Stanton, Isabella Rossellini and many others overall it's a pretty good cult classic film to watch..
"Wild at Heart" is a nonstop nonsensical orgy of sex and violence that can only rely on its stylish inventiveness to build an ersatz if interest.Don't you even dare expecting the luxury of a "plot", Lynch obviously didn't intend to tell a story of the conventional type, its love-on-the-run-going-wild-and-tainted-with- fantasy approach takes it to such unexpected levels of surrealism that you can't even be sure if the film was intended to please an audience, even a minority, or to please Lynch himself...
In the case of "Wild at Heart", that sense of irony, this total rejection of all the predicaments of good taste and behavior belong to the "good" as well as the bad guys.Nicolas Cage plays an exuberant Elvis-like free-spirited figure as Sailor, and Laura Dern is both sexy and vulnerable as Lula, her lover, Diane Ladd is the mother who rejects this union and makes it a personal matter to prevent that love from happening.
but "Wild at Heart" is busier making effects than a point.It's not a bad film, far from it, but it plays like a sort of bloody joke where you realize near the end that it's a private one and you're not part of it.
I've seen this movie twice but it is one of my favorites, however I would not consider myself biased due to my appreciation of David Lynch, my own life with a situation of being separated from a girl I love due to her mother, or anything else.I think the goal of movies should not be solely to entertain, to pass the time, or anything like that- movies like this exist, and some like to watch them only for that value.
I'm not a HUGE fan of his early work, but as a general rule anything by Lynch is worth seeing at least once.It stars the brilliant Nicolas Cage as ex-convict Sailor, who is obsessively in love with Lula (Laura Dern).
'Wild at Heart' is one of the best films of David Lynch, maybe second only to 'Blue Velvet'.
The two principal characters are splendidly played by Nicholas Cage (in the first in a series of bad-but-redeemable-guy roles) and Laura Dern engaging in a deadly run trying to escape the revenge and will to set them apart of her mother, making love and seeding blood and death around them.
In a cruel, creepy, crumbling world, the romance of Sailor and Lula at the core of Wild At Heart is the bright sun that a galaxy of eccentric characters revolve around in David Lynch's signature film.
Bizarre, absurd, surreal and extremely violent, the film weaves a canvas of classic love story, Wizard of Oz and Natural Born Killers (another great messed-up romance) that will stick in your mind forever - with its extreme characters, brain scrambling soundtrack and memorable images.From its shocking opening to its beautiful Elvis-fuelled climax, Wild at Heart never puts a foot wrong.
It's impossible to imagine anyone other than Nicolas Cage as Sailor Ripley, the coolest - if not smartest - man on Earth or Willem Dafoe as his nemesis, the dark angel of death Bobby Peru.For an archetypal Lynch film, the plot of Wild at Heart, inspired by Barry Gifford's great book, is quite straight forward and very romantic, which makes it more accessible to the general public - well, those with strong stomachs - who want to cruise along this particular highway and taste life on the 'wild' side!.
'Wild At Heart' is full of great Lynchian moments - the opening fight, Cage dancing with karate moves to a metal band, the extreme close ups of matches being lit, the recurring 'Wizard Of Oz' theme, Crispin Glover's unforgettable cameo as Lula's seriously disturbed cousin Dell, Lula's father on fire, the silver dollars, the 'Yojimbo' nod in the bank sequence with the dog, and especially the scenes on a lonely highway where Sailor and Lula see the aftermath of a car crash with Chris Isaak's 'Wicked Game' playing on the soundtrack.
I really liked Blue velvet and Mulholland Drive and other David Lynch films.
Unusually for Lynch, the script's pretty straightforward and chronological; as Wild At Heart star Dafoe noted later, "I was always shocked at how logical it was - its world was so complete." But as ever, El Diablo's in the details.Here, Blue Velvet's yuppie nightmare becomes a white trash ticket to Hell: reckless Sailor Ripley (Cage, in full-on Elvis mode) loves hopeless romantic Lula Fortune (Dern), which drives Marietta Fortune (played by Dern's real-life mother Ladd) round the twist.
'Wild at Heart' is worth to see only for Nicolas Cage wearing a snakeskin jacket and dancing to heavy metal, or for Harry Dean Stanton making animal noises while watching nature program on TV, or for Laura Dern's character's twisted tales about her childhood, or for Willem Dafoe's slimy and perverted Bobby Peru, or for Isabella Rossellini's eyebrow, or for Diane Ladd's crazy outbursts.'Wild at Heart' is probably David Lynch's most 'normal' film when it comes to conventional filmmaking, but it is wild and weird enough that it didn't appeal to mainstream audience, and it never will.
Nic Cage gives one of his more restrained performances and is fine but didn't impress me like Leaving Las Vegas.It's a decent movie, but it feels as if Lynch didn't want to make it too weird or too conventional.
Here is the story:In this film After serving prison time for a self-defense killing, Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) reunites with girlfriend Lula Fortune (Laura Dern).
Young lovers Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) run from the variety of weirdos that Lula's mom (Diane Ladd) has hired to kill Sailor.Early test screenings for the film did not go well; Lynch estimated that 80 people walked out of the first test screening and 100 in the next.
I guess there's probably three types of people when it comes to David Lynch films (1) People who love his work and find it unique, deep and a refreshing change from the Hollywood norm (2) People who find it a pretentious mess, lacking in any real story (3) People who say, "Who's David Lynch?" If you fall into the third category then I guess that jumping into his 1990 film 'Wild at Heart' is as good as any place to start your journey into his twisted mind.
For 'Wild at Heart' is quite a 'typical' David Lynch film, in that it's narrative deliberately strays away from being particularly 'linear' and – in many cases – is open to interpretation as to what is actually going on in the story.
Much of what you get from a David Lynch film is based on how it makes you feel, rather than the story it tells.The film stars Nicholas Cage, who plays a young man with a – you guessed it – wild streak.
All in all, I think "Wild at Heart" is an underrated movie that, while far from Lynch's best, is very enjoyable.
It speaks just as well about every other film he made of course where a certain amount of fear makes the things to dream about stand out from the night as all the more urgent.It has enough going for it either way; a road movie given to us with a gonzo eye, crime and anguish as kitchen- sink ritual, archetypally American male and female avatars of sexual youth, a sense of wanting to just love but the world is a wicked place, and if that's not enough something else will come along in the next scene.It was awarded the top prize that year at Cannes.
Soundtrack is cool with very different sources mixed well together : from classical, to Badalamenti, to Presley, to metalAt last, the casting is really well-built : Dafoe is really scary, Cage finds one of his best character, Rosselini achieves in 5 minutes what she lacked in one hour in « blue velvet » and the family duo of Ladd is unusual in film history : to have a mother and daughter playing the same parts in such a deranged movie is a real experience So, it's true that along 2 hours, we have our eyes, our ears, ours brains exploded with talent so Palme d'Or was deserved.
I don't like Nicolas Cage, I can't watch a film where he's in, his performance wasn't bad, but good it wasn't for sure.
Nicolas Cage is at his best playing the larger than life Sailor Ripley and Laura Dern does a great job as Lula.
Wild at Heart was probably the film that David Lynch directed at the height of his fame.
It's a strange combination in a strange film.I guess you could place Wild at Heart as a film somewhere between Lynch's full on surrealist movies like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and his more straightforward narratives like Blue Velvet.
"Wild At Heart" is my first real taste of a David Lynch film.
I've been wanting to get a taste of David Lynch for a while because I'm into weird, over-the-top films and so when "Wild At Heart" popped up on ITV (not the crap wildlife drama) I had to give it a record.
Wild at Heart is the 8th Lynch film I have seen.
Throw all preconceptions of what you think a movie should or can be before watching David Lynch's disturbingly bizarre and highly experimental Wild at Heart.
And as with most David Lynch films, I definitely feel like Wild at Heart deserves a few more viewings before I write it off as just another film..
David Lynch's 'Wild at Heart' revolves centrally around Sailor and Lula.
Wild at Heart is one of David Lynch's most conventional stories, which says something about Lynch as this film is very bizarre and full of surreal elements.
Disturbing and twisted imagery is, of course, Lynch's forte so it is no big surprise that Wild at Heart is as dark as they come.No David Lynch film is complete without a collection of weird and wacky characters.
Very bizarre but very good.Wild at Heart is like watching Blue Velvet mixed with Wizard of Oz and it's fascinating.
Granted, Wild at Heart does not represent the apex of Lynch's career (that'd go to either Blue Velvet or Mulholland Dr.), but it is still a far better film than much of his other work (actually, I think, all of his other work outside of the first few Twin Peaks episodes).The movie is a garish, melodramatic love story.