As a co-host of an Erotic Thriller podcast, I rented Wild Side with a hopeful amount of expectation. I first caught wind of the film when listening to an episode of Katrina Longworth’s ever exemplary You Must Remember This. A film podcast dealing with the secret of forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century. This entry, which appeared in the middle of the show’s season on Erotic Thrillers, placed particular emphasis on Wild Side alongside Bound. Wild Side and Bound both found themselves released in 1996 with similar plots. The two films centred their noir-styled stories around female same-sex relationships that were looking to escape the tyranny of male-dominated worlds. Longworth had felt a strong pull towards Wild Side over Bound due to its unpredictable and volatile nature.
A film with a dogged and tragic history, Wild Side was
directed by Donald Cammell, who fashioned the feature as a love letter for his
wife and co-writer of the film China Kong. Cammell had sights on the film
premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, however, the film distributor Nu Image,
saw things differently when they viewed the product. Cammell was fired during
postproduction with distributors re-editing and marketing the film with a
heavier focus on the homosexual interplay. Cammell, who was already suffering
from long-term depression, killed himself soon after the film’s release. The
scant coverage on Cammell attributed his death to Wild Side being taken away
from him and re-shaped. However, in listening to the detailed podcast episode
which focuses on Wild Side, the story is more depressing.
The distribution meddling was considered a truncated mess by
those who saw the shorter cut of the movie. A film which was focused on
something that was never Cammell’s original intention. Kong along with Frank
Mazzola the editor of the film, was granted permission to re-edit Wild Side 3
years later. This allowed a “director’s cut” which aligned more with Cammell’s
vision.
The director's cut, the version I streamed via Amazon, is
still a mess, albeit more of a hot one. It’s a film which has bright intentions
being an Avant-garde noir which melds a tender love story between two women,
with a satirical outlook on the banking system. The possible notion is that
within the financial world, nobody knows who’s fucking who.
Anne Heche plays Alex, an investment banker who moonlights
as a call girl at night to make ends meet. Her nocturnal activities have her
mingling with a volatile money launderer named Bruno, played by a truly
unhinged Christopher Walken. Bruno has a penchant for being dominated by Alex
but also employs her for her day job; with designs to launder money through
Alex through some convoluted, yet typically 90s means of computer fraud. Alex
is pushed into further trouble by the aggressive sexual advances of Bruno’s
driver Tony (Steven Bauer), who is an undercover cop looking to blackmail her
into helping him arrest Bruno. At this point, Alex is introduced to Bruno’s
wife Virgina (Joan Chen) and soon builds a strong attraction to her. This is
the most basic way of detailing a plot that folds in more twists than a pretzel
factory.
Wild Side’s tonal inconsistencies and bonkers plotting have
garnered a few fans after it was salvaged from a rather unsanctimonious dumping
on cable T.V. The likes of Katrina Longsworth and Mark Kermode enjoying the
film's unpredictable nature and fluid attitude towards sexuality. It is a film
in which all four main characters seem to proposition each other at least once.
There is a devil-may-care attitude to proceedings which only a bohemian artist
like Cammell could perhaps produce. Wild Side’s saturated colour scheme and
near arbitrary non-linear cross-cutting are welcome creative decisions, with
the film giving an unpredictable energy that can often invigorate a
well-trodden noir.
The best reason to watch Wild Side however is perhaps for
the two-eye catching central performances. The first is a masterclass in
derangement from Christopher Walken, who by the end of the film is chewing
scenery in galaxy-consuming proportions. The less showy, yet more potent
display, however, comes from the late Anne Heche. This early role for Heche
isn’t just revealing the amount of untapped talent the actress held away from
audiences, but how strong the performance is by an actress who by her account straight
up hated her time on the film. Heche, an actress who had escaped an abusive
family life, recalled in her memoir ‘Call Me Crazy” that Cammell had sexually
abused her on the set of the film. Despite her behind-the-scenes issues with
the film, she delivers a fierce performance. Brimming with sexuality,
determination but also vulnerability. Heche mentioned that her film choices were
affected by aspects of her personal life. Her turn here should have a viewer
wonder what could have been.
In addition to this individual performance, her chemistry
with Walken and Chen is equally strong. Her scenes with Chen are particularly
effective. The intimate sex scenes that the distributors were clamouring to
exploit work here not because of titillation, but due to tenderness displayed
by the actors. Cammell’s monstrous behaviour doesn’t translate in this
instance. The ugliness doesn’t transcend the sweetness.
However, this is only in certain scenes. Elsewhere the
film's erratic tone delivers a rape scene early on which is distressing in its
vulgarity. The scene is shocking as not only does it come out of nowhere, but
the unpleasantness of what happened to Heche on set, suddenly hits home
incredibly hard. Her convincingly raw performance also brings forth the burden
of knowledge. And while it is easy to dismiss the matter as an actress
“doing what she was paid to do”, kudos for Heche is most certainly earned. The
actress was digging deep into her history and then present. Not every actor
should need to do that. Furthermore, not every actor can.
The predatory behaviours that inhabit the men in Wild Side
clash with the softer tone the film approaches with the women. In a way it
makes sense when the plot is considered, this is similar to Bound in which two
women find love with one another within an aggressive, male-dominated world.
However, in terms of watching Wild Side as a slice of entertainment, Cammell’s
piece never really gels. The tones are too schizophrenic. The narrative is too
incoherent. There are fun performances, but all seem to belong to four
different movies. The story's pacing is erratic and lacks the right connective
tissue to make things engaging.
Wild Side had me thinking of another dark, Avant-Garde,
lesbian noir: David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001), a baffling puzzle box of a
movie, which bypasses its seemingly incomprehensible narrative for an emotional
experience which, over two decades on, still heart-wrenching to watch.
Moreover, Bound, which had its homoerotic sexuality judged, sometimes crudely,
when the film was believed to be made by two straight men, delivers a similar
story of ill-gotten finance and same-sex with more energy, style and crucially,
more consistency. Bound has more fun with what it’s doing, it’s more playful
with its noir stylings and doesn’t have the awkward verbiage Wild Side has
which distracts the interplay between its performers. However, while the
dialogue is bad, the actors know how to deliver it.
With respectful concern for the deceased who made the movie,
it’s easy to see why Wild Side was almost lost to annals of cinematic history.
It’s a film which has cult written all over it. Some areas are fascinating,
while other aspects are farcical. Seriously. Look at Christopher Walken
in this. It looks like Tommy Wiseau nabbed Walken’s appearance for his
unintentional tragicomedy The Room (2003). Also, those two men could easily do
battle in the unhinged stakes which their turns in these two movies respectively.
Wild Side seems to owe more to The Room than expected. You watch it once to see
if there’s a reason to gain from it other than its history. You marvel at the
unpredictable nature of the text and some of its aesthetics. But after that
first watch, you may question if there’s a need to revisit it ever again. For
myself as a Co-Host of an Erotic Thriller podcast, however, I may have to.
Wild Side is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video
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