The Loveless Blu-ray Review

The Wild at Heart One.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, July 11, 2019

Kathryn Bigelow entered the annals of all time film history when she became the first female to win an Academy Award for Best Director (along with a slew of other accolades for her work on The Hurt Locker ). But like many, probably even most, of those who have similarly had their names inscribed in whatever the virtual "Book of Life" of Hollywood luminaries may be, Bigelow had had a long career as a journey(wo?)man in La La Land, as evidenced at least in part by this interesting new release by Arrow ofalso offered Willem Dafoe his first starring role as a biker named Vance roaming the rural areas around the old U.S. Highway 17 (the original title of the film). Perhaps due to the then relatively unknown cast and crew,kind of unusually seemed to have its theatrical exhibition unspool over the course of several years, with some festival outings as early as 1981, but with its New York premiere not occurring until 1984. Also kind of interestingly, Bigelow shares co-writing and co-directing credits on this effort with Monty Montgomery, a guy who is perhaps better known as a producer, especially with regard to a couple of his collaborations with David Lynch (Montgomery was an Associate Producer on an episode of, and was one of the producing team on Wild at Heart ).is at times reminiscent of such films as another outing with "Wild" in its title, the inimitable Marlon Brando biker entry The Wild One , or even some older films like The Petrified Forest , in terms of a bunch of folks gathered at an at least somewhat isolated "watering hole" who have some unexpected visitors drop by.In a way, I guess an admittedly tangential connection tomight be made for this film, at least in terms of some of its "retro" proclivities and its star-crossed love affair between Vance and a girl named Telena (Marin Kanter). Vance is shown to be catnip for women from the get go, in a kind of funny vignette which shows him helping a stranded female motorist with a flat tire who initially seems to be quite fearful of him, but warms up to him, especially after he takes off his jacket and reveals his upper torso. Dafoe manages to craft the whole almost feral ambience of his character rather nicely in these early scenes, so that later plot developments with Telena may ring at least a little truer than some of the frankly overamped melodramatic aspects of the eventual storyline might otherwise suggest. (There's everything from incest to "gender fluidity" here, for those who are keeping count.)Butseems to want to kind of meld those over the top histrionics onto more of an Art House property, one that some may feel moves at a pretty glacial pace, despite lots of shots of motorcycles and some really cool vintage cars tooling around the back roads of Georgia. And the film may suffer from not clearly defining whom it wants the "real" villain to be. It wouldto be Tarver (J. Don Ferguson), owner of the diner and gas station where Vance and his crew stop. Tarver is also not so coincidentally Telena's father, which of course leads to disastrous consequences. But if you look around,isn't especially kind to some other characters (in terms of making them at least avillainous), something that may have been intended to imply a general moral turpitude, but which struck me as having some issues at the screenplay level.Along with some arguably clunky writing, some of the supporting performances here probably can't quite match Dafoe's acumen, even at this early stage of his career. The film probably relies too much on trying to be a "character" piece, when many of the characters are given some relatively unhelpful dialogue and some of the actors attempting to bring those characters to life can tend to stumble. Still, the film has style in abundance, and those interested in the early careers of Dafoe and Bigelow may well find this an agreeable enough diversion.