Wild at Heart (1990)

“Too bad he couldn't visit that old Wizard of Oz and get some good advice."

This is a David Lynch film, so you just know there's going to be weirdness, symbolism and ambiguous subtext. We get all this in Wild at Heart, yet it simultaneously is and isn't what one might expect from Lynch.

Interestingly, despite the arty directorial flashes, dreamy atmosphere, eschewal of nturalism in both directorial and acting styles and Lynchian blurring of what is and is not real, on the surface this is quite a straightforward film, to the extent of being cheesy. After all, it's a road movie, a romance with a happy ending, and interestingly the kind of action movie based on American  grotesques that looks ahead to Tarantino.

And yet there's so much going on beneath the surface- playful irony, yes, but much more. There's a loving relationship between two flawed but decent people, lots and lots of good sex, and the soppiest ending ever- but there's also a lot of darkness, particularly sexual darkness. We learn of Lula being sexually abused as a teenager, and Bobby sexually assaults her in a very uncomfortable scene. Yet, although this film doesn't flinch from the fact that this is a sometimes dark world, where good people suffer and die needlessly, it's also a film that holds out the hope of eventual happiness.

It's also, interestingly, a film full of characters reminiscing to one another, but these memories are unclear, frangmentary and inconsistent: all the characters, and indeed the narrative itself, are unreliable narrators. Memory, and thus the past, is a fragile, vague thing. There is only now. There's a melancholy to this, but also hope: we don't have to be prisoners of our past, as Sailor ultimately learns from the Good Witch.

And no, I've no idea what those Wizard of Oz references are all about, beyond the obvious rarallel of a journey. But this is a film that can be enjoued at a much deeper level while also being a weirdly straightforward melodrama. Fascinating.