Wild at Heart (1990)
Directed by David Lynch

After violently beating a man and being sent to prison, Sailor (Nicolas Cage) returns to the welcome arms of his young lover Lula (Laura Dern), hoping to start a new life far away from whence they came. Of all the films screening as part of this series, Wild at Heart is the least cynical about love – it features young people permitting themselves to embrace the torrent of their passions, and embark on a dark and twisted Lynchian journey to keep it going. The frankly excessive (albeit remarkably hot) sex scenes throughout the film are shot in warm hues, providing a stark contrast to the murky underbelly that orbit Sailor and Lula, with Lula’s mother (Diane Ladd) working to end the couple’s relationship, like a noose tightening throughout the film’s runtime. Of all of Lynch’s films, this proves to be one of his more clumsier efforts (second only to Dune), if only because the earnestness of Sailor and Lula’s relationship so frequently gets undercut by Lynch’s camp tendencies. The hybrid is something akin to the tenderness of Terrence Malick’s Badlands by way of John Waters’ Pink Flamingos – never uninteresting, but frequently befuddling.