![]() To lapse Freudian for a moment, Lynch evacuates the moderating force of ego from Ladd's Marietta altogether, thereby staging an at times astonishing spectacle in which Marietta's superego and id do battle. Indeed, nary a whiff of subtlety informs Ladd's portrayal of Marietta. The polyester fakery of Marietta's outer affect is perhaps the first clue that Ladd's not playing for nuance here. All while adorned with an extraordinary succession of fake nails and faker hair. Ladd's Marietta is a distillation of every trope and cliche of the overwrought Southern woman. But I must admit that this film also contains some of the best actoring at the edges Lu's ever seen (Harry Dean Stanton & Willem Dafoe), as well as the incomparable extraordinariness of.ĭiane Ladd plays Marietta Fortune (aka "Lula's Momma"), a woman murderously obsessed with keeping her beloved daughter (Laura Dern in a brazen, mature performance) from the adoring clutches of the shady-but-sexy Sailor (Nicholas Cage, effective but a little lost here). Rescreening the film now, for the first time in nearly two decades, I'm struck that Wild at Heart remains Lynch's least interesting film, the project most snared in the auteur's transition from Hollywood trope as metaphor ( Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks) to Hollywood trope as conceptual device ( Mulholland Dr., Inland Empire). But if Blue Velvet was Lulu's first experience with Lynchian love, Wild at Heart was certainly its complement: my first experience truly loathing Lynch. Moreover, and more than most contemporary directors, I've always really "connected" with Lynch's reverence for actors - as mysterious, possibly mystical beings - as well as his fascination with (extra)ordinary faces, voices and bodies. Twenty years ago, Lynch's Blue Velvet and Fassbinder's Querelle were the first films I truly thought/fought about as passionately about as I did literature or theatre. To say that StinkyLulu has a love/loathe relationship with David Lynch would be simplifying things.
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