Wild at Heart

Fresh out of prison, Sailor Ripley runs off with his girlfriend Lula Fortune on a wild road trip across the South, chased by the killers her furious mother has hired to get rid of him.

David Lynch wrote and directed Wild at Heart from Barry Gifford's novel, and it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1990. Nicolas Cage plays Sailor, a snakeskin-jacketed romantic who worships Elvis. Laura Dern plays Lula, the wild-spirited young woman who waits for him through a prison stretch. Sailor served that time for killing a man who came at him with a knife, a man Lula's mother Marietta had hired. When he gets out, the couple breaks his parole and heads west toward California. Marietta, played by Diane Ladd in an Oscar-nominated role, sends private detective Johnnie Farragut after them. She also quietly calls in a gangster to have Sailor killed, setting off a chain of violence she cannot control.

The road leads through New Orleans to the dusty Texas town of Big Tuna, where the money runs out and the danger closes in. There they meet Bobby Peru, a menacing career criminal played by Willem Dafoe, who lures Sailor into a robbery that goes badly wrong. Lula learns she is pregnant just as the couple's dream starts falling apart. Lynch fills the trip with strange characters, sudden brutal violence and constant nods to The Wizard of Oz. Underneath it all is a sincere love story about two outsiders trying to hold on to each other. The new 4K restoration presents the uncut Cannes version on the big screen.