Wild at Heart

Wild at Heart is kind of like Indiana Jones in Lynch's style. The director took a trashy literary motif and turned it into an intelligent parody of the genre. Additionally, he added his classic ingredients, such as perversion, craziness, and the madness of his characters, so that a viewer who has seen, for example, Blue Velvet, essentially gets the same thing, but much stronger, like a punch to the face. It's a subtle parody, where the director intentionally exaggerates his characters into caricatures. The film is interesting in how it mixes insane music into romantic or dark thriller situations. It uses his favorite actors, such as Laura Dern, who know well what kind of weirdo Lynch is and can meet him halfway. At the same time, Lynch doesn't go into purely hallucinogenic territory here and the film is consumable for a wider audience. Overall impression: 80%. (06/07/2012)

Not a dynamic road movie, but a brutal and somewhat crazy ride, whose content I either didn't understand or is really as idiotic as it seemed to me. David Lynch himself in his prime again, serving one oddity after another. Some scenes were so insane that I absolutely didn't get them, others were completely unrelated to the story, and Lynch also edits in a terribly confusing way for my taste. (09/05/2005)

"A genuinely wacky romance directed by David Lynch with one really great head shot and numerous references to The Wizard of Oz. As the years go by, I find that Lynch's films mature like wine with each viewing, and I appreciate Wild at Heart more and more." That's what I wrote here about the film exactly ten years ago, and today, after several more viewings, including one on a big screen, I can only add that it is simply a unique achievement, both in David Lynch's filmography and in world cinema in general. [KVIFF 2022] (23/07/2022)

"Fuck Me. Fuck Me," or the pleading of the wonderfully slimy Willem Dafoe in one of the memorable scenes in a typical showcase of madness by Lynch – you can think what you want about it, but you can't take your eyes off it. Three stars for Lynch’s poetics and one star for Dafoe’s rotten teeth and blown off head. (20/04/2003)

The most insane romance I’ve ever seen. Even though it has plenty of Lynch’s abnormality, Wild At heart was missing something that would make it not just weird, but unforgettably weird. That said, Cage, Dern and especially Defoe deliver remarkable creations that help the film to get somewhere just below the summit of the audience’s refined tastes (in the good sense). 7/10 (07/04/2009)