Wild at Heart Review: David Lynch’s Controversial Palme d'Or Winner with Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern

Despite winning the Palme d’Or and starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart feels like the least acclaimed canonical Lynch film. It’s as if you have to mention it because of the controversy around it receiving the award in 1990, but it hasn’t been reclaimed the same way Lost Highway, Inland Empire, and a few of Lynch’s other movies have.

And while it may not achieve the same heights of those films, it operates in much of the same way. Wild at Heart is an angsty fever dream riddled with melodramatic energy. Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern play Sailor and Lula, respectively, as they try to escape the contract killers sent by Lula’s mom Marietta (played by Diane Ladd) to kill Sailor and bring her daughter home. Sailor and Lula go on the run, trailed by many eclectic characters, including Willem Dafoe‘s raggedy deadbeat Bobby Peru.

wild at heart 1990 movie — Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage in Wild at Heart (1990), directed by David Lynch

The slim cast carries Wild at Heart, with every character actor bringing their A-game and buying in to the hazy, offbeat vision David Lynch has. It’s probably the best that Laura Dern has ever been in a movie, and the same could be argued for Nicolas Cage as well. Their “Bonnie and Clyde” energy is felt throughout, even if they don’t carry the same murderous energy that that duo had while on the run. It’s a movie fueled by the vices each character has – from bank robbing to sex to excessive smoking. It runs the gamut of motifs that would land a film like Wild at Heart in hot water with the film censors, which is why it take intense editing from Lynch just to land an R rating.

Wild at Heart isn’t my favorite of David Lynch’s movies, but there’s a lot here that serves as the basis for what would become his most successful run of films. It’s dreamy and mysterious in equal doses. And combined with the on-the-run young adult energy that Cage and Dern bring, I can see why Wild at Heart became a lauded film at the Cannes Film Festival, while also being too acidic and strange for general audiences to hold onto.

It also feels sporadic and idiosyncratic, like Lynch could be the only director to pull off a movie in this way. Because its not like Wild at Heart is the first movie in this lane. There have been plenty of films about two lovers running from the systems or structure in their current life. But Lynch makes it steamier, hazier, and wilder than nearly any attempt before this. He dives deep into the subconscious to pick at your primal interests.

So I’d say Wild at Heart is one of the singular, most important movie releases of 1990. A hit at film festivals and understandably divisive, Wild at Heart will receive the same treatment as all David Lynch movies in due time. I recently re-watched it on a stunning Blu-ray transfer from Shout Factory which is probably the best way to see the movie in high definition. It’s as sharp and fascinating as when I first saw it, headlined by Cage and Dern with incredible (and I mean incredible) screen chemistry.

Score: 8/10

Genre: Crime, Romance, Thriller

Watch Wild at Heart (1990) on VOD

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