Cinema Veritas

Directed by Jonathan Demme

At USA Paris

SOMETHING WILD joins the ranks of Blue Velvet and True Stories as one of this season's most bizarre films about life in so called `average' America.

Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) is a typical yuppie businessman whose idea of adventure is investing in municipal bonds. He meets Lulu (Melanie Griffith), a Bohemian in bangles, who offers him a ride to work.

From that fateful moment on, Charles' life is out of his control. Lulu takes him on a joy ride which ends with a kinky afternoon in a cheap motel. She is mysterious and exciting, his free-spirited fantasy. She somehow knows that he's "a closet rebel" and takes the liberty of tossing his office beeper out the window.

Something Wild becomes even more strange when Lulu takes Charles home to Mother, sheds her shocking black wig and reveals that her true name is Audrey. Suddenly, Charles is the `husband' of a sweet country woman, and the father of their two kids. He plays along with her ruse, even attending Audrey's high-school reunion.

The film is at its best in the first hour, when it explores the ways Charles and Audrey fulfill each other's fantasies. She is his risk-taking, defiant lover. He is her loving, stable husband. The relationship is odd but sweet and interesting. Whether or not it will last is the next logical question, and one that interests the audience.

Had writer E. Max Frye decided to develop the refreshing characters he had created and to explore the shortcomings and the advantages of their unique love, this film might have been immensely satisfying. Instead, he introduces Audrey's psychotic ex-convict ex-husband, Ray (Ray Liotta), and the film loses its uniqueness. Despite Liotta's energetic performance, the film becomes a typical thriller, with a jealous lover trying to recapture his old flame, and her hero coming to the rescue. The truly interesting element of the movie, namely the quirky characters, are sacrificed to an old hat plot which is not nearly as engrossing as the first half of the film promises to be.

All of the performances are first rate, especially Liotta's, whose menacing grin and volatile temper make strong-willed Audrey's fear of him credible. But the final third of the film deviates too sharply from its initial tone, resulting in an ending one might expect from a Spielberg film--conventional and uninspired. Something Wild has all of the ingredients of an offbeat, interesting movie, but, unfortunately, the chef seems to have lost the recipe.