Wild at heart (1990)

Wild at heart is based on a pulp novel and also the film adaptation is through-and-through pulp material. If you leave it at that, this is a quite good movie, with some elegant editing work; the way in which scenes are linked and contrasted make the film what it is. Lynch succeeds in startling his audience with the seemingly random jumps from scene to scene. There's also a bunch of gritty/eerie scenes. Lynch concocts a love story clad with 50's nostalgia, raunchy bad guys, a bustling soundtrack and gruesome plot twists. True; Lynch gets away with a lot; corny Elvis imitations / cheap symbolism (ecstacy/FIRE!) / "shock-value"-scenes. At his best, Lynch conjures those moments where reality slips away, lacunae, moments of overwhelming fear in which nothing makes sense. There are a few scenes where Lynch appeals to those emotions - for example, there is a scene in which one of the bad guys of the movie, Bobby Peru, steps into the dirty, puke-smeared motel room in which our heroine is resting. But none of the images in Wild at heart manages to grab a hold of me in the same way as some of Lynch's other material.