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"...and weird on top." Greaser (Nicolas Cage) and baby doll (Laura Dern) on the lam, against them an infernal world embodied by witchy Mom (Diane Ladd). Horny Candides, or Orpheus and Eurydice if played by Elvis and Marilyn, The Wizard of Oz is relied upon as a locus for such delirium. "When we're making love, you just about take me right over that rainbow." David Lynch's hothouse on wheels, demons and totems across the postmodern desert. The detective on the couple's trail (Harry Dean Stanton) relaxes with videos of grisly hyenas, a procession of fulminating grotesques follows—Isabella Rossellini and Grace Zabriskie as peroxided unibrowed sisters, Crispin Glover with roaches in his undies, Freddie Jones quaking in appreciation of a jazz band. Above all, Willem Dafoe grinning through rotten gums as the resident "black angel," cornering Dern in a puke-stained motel for a show-stopping bit of carnal terror. "One-eyed Jack's yearnin' to go a-peepin' in a seafood store." (The heroine vainly clicks her heels in hope of dissipating the miasma of foul lust summoned by the greasy gargoyle.) Deep South "along the yellow brick road," Cape Fear to New Orleans and beyond, Big Tuna "ain't exactly Emerald City." Colored lights for blubbery odalisques in a Texas courtyard, Stygian darkness for the crash victim like bloodied alabaster (Sherilyn Fenn). Gargantuan matchstick flares and incendiary transitions, cp. Witney's The Bonnie Parker Story, a Frostian question of holding with those who favor fire. Illumination comes to Mister Cool in the form of the Good Witch (Sheryl Lee) and liquidates the villainess, obit anus, abit onus. The capper is a rush of authentic emotion bursting through the layers of quotation and artifice, a spectacle to stop traffic. "Don't turn away from love." The Nineties begin here and no mistake. Cinematography by Frederick Elmes. With Calvin Lockhart, J.E. Freeman, Marvin Kaplan, W. Morgan Sheppard, David Patrick Kelly, Jack Nance, John Lurie, and Pruitt Taylor Vince.
--- Fernando F. Croce |