Elvis Goes to Oz: “Wild at Heart”

 I watched Wild at Heart in memory of the late Diane Ladd: it was one of three films for which she received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, though she never won the statuette. In 1974, she first earned a chance at Oscar glory for her supporting role as a feisty diner waitress (“Kiss my grits”) in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. She was nominated a second time in 1990 for Wild at Heart, and then a third time a year later for Rambling Rose. Remarkably, in the latter two films she played opposite her real-life daughter, the very talented Laura Dern. (There’s a Roger Corman connection too—Laura, born in 1967, was apparently conceived while her parents were location, shooting Corman’s biker classic, The Wild Angels.)

 Wild at Heart was written and directed by David Lynch, who had burst into the public consciousness in 1986 with Blue Velvet. In that provocative film, which explored the perverse underbelly of an apparently wholesome mid-western town, young Laura Dern (about 17 at the time) played a schoolgirl whose sunny naïveté is in marked contrast to the perverse doings going on all around her. She was again to star for Lynch four years later, but in a highly different role. In Wild at Heart, Dern plays Lula Pace Fortune, a North Carolina cutie simply oozing with sexuality. Her man is Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage), a ne’er-do-well Elvis Presley enthusiast who treasures Lula even more than he does his genuine snakeskin jacket. Soon after the film begins, he’s carted off to prison, but when he returns it’s Lula he wants most. And the bulk of the film becomes their odyssey through the American South, heading for the distant dream of California.

 I hardly anticipated that this film is an unlikely nod to Dorothy and her friends easing down the Yellow Brick Road. (Instead of walking, the lovers cruise in a gaudy convertible, but the far-off Emerald City shines brightly in their eyes.) Of course an Oz story needs a Wicked Witch, and that’s where Diane Ladd comes in. As shrill socialite Marietta Fortune, she’s determined to separate daughter Lula from her lover, and it’s only gradually that we fully understand why. A widow, Marietta has several useful local men at her beck and call, and her intentions are hardly honorable.

 Though the film’s Oz references do not overwhelm the story, they give it a fanciful quality that sets it apart from darker Lynch projects. Nor does it fit tonally into the familiar “lovers on the lam” film genre, which encompasses grim dramas like Badlands and Natural Born Killers, as well as such older classics as They Live by Night (1948) and Gun Crazy (1950). It’s fun to spot the Ozian allusions, which include ruby slippers, a big pink bubble, and a real-life oversized Munchkin. True, Wild at Heart is not without its moments of graphic Lynchian mayhem. But its violence is of the comic book variety. And the ending is one that Lynch himself considered happily ever after, with true love conquering all, even wicked witches. (This was a marked change from the conclusion of the novel on which the film is based.)

 To the surprise of many (including critic Roger Ebert), Wild at Heart was cheered at the Cannes Film Festival, and received the prestigious Palme d’Or. Back at home, though,  Lynch learned his flick would be X-rated if cuts were not made. What I saw on DVD was still pretty wild. It may be perverse, but I liked encountering a “Dorothy” who could emphatically declare, “You got me hotter than Georgia asphalt.”