Totalmente Selvagem

In New York, the yuppie newly promoted Vice President Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) meets the sexy and free-spirited Lulu (Melanie Griffith) after cheating a restaurant for fun. Lulu offers a ride for him in her convertible but she "abducts" Charles and they go to a motel in New Jersey, where they spend the night together. On the next morning, she heads to her hometown in Pennsylvania to spend the weekend with Charlie. When they arrive in her mother's home, she discloses her real name – Audrey Hankel – to him and she tells her mother that Charlie is her husband. In the night, they go to her high-school reunion posing as husband and wife. But Audrey's ex-husband Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta) that has just left prison on probation meets her in the party. Audrey does not tell Charlie who Ray is and Charlie accepts Ray's invitation to drink some beer with him and his date Irene (Margaret Colin). After a while, Ray becomes violent, hits Charlie and kidnaps Audrey. But Charlie does not intend to give up on her.

"Something Wild" is one of my favorite films and one of the best cult- movies of the 80's. I have just watched this film at least for the sixth time and I still love it. The sweet and gorgeous Melanie Griffith has one of the best performances of her career in the role of a young woman detached in a moment from the social conventions and extremely conservative when she meets her mother. Lulu is a reference to Louise Brooks' character in "Pandora's Box". Jeff Daniels is also excellent and very funny in the role of a naive and silly executive that finds that is better off feel like a live dog than a dead lion. Ray Liotta is also fantastic in the role of a cynical scum. The screenplay divides the story in two parts and fight in Charlie's house is impressively realistic. Last but not the least, the soundtrack is fantastic. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Totalmente Selvagem" ("Totally Wild")

Note: On 18 August 2014 I saw this movie again.

Sometimes you have to search high and low, but you really can find some interesting films made in the late 1980s. Though Jonathan Demme's film is not perfect, it still brilliantly outshines most of the crud made back then. Something Wild is the study of two souls who seem to come from different worlds going on a crazy road trip full of sex, violence, and even a high school reunion.

It all begins inside a tiny diner in New York City when openly free-spirited Audrey (Melanie Griffith) notices yuppie Charlie (Jeff Daniels) sneak out on paying his bill. She confronts him outside, and the two of them end up jumping in her car and taking off on a sunny Friday afternoon. At first it would seem that this trip across the state line will merely end in a sexual tryst in a cheap motel, but little does Charlie know, Audrey has all sorts of plans for him that weekend. After some serious hanky-panky, Audrey takes Charlie back to her home town, introduces him to her mother as her husband, and then takes him to her high school reunion. In a development a little bit contrived for this critic's liking, one of Charlie's co-workers also happens to be attending this reunion. This could potentially destroy the facade of the family man on a wild weekend that Charlie is trying to perpetrate. (at this point we learn his wife left him quite a while ago) Further complicating matters is the arrival of Audrey's psychotic ex-husband, played with fearsome intensity by Ray Liotta. From that point on, this film which has largely gone for laughs, becomes rather intense and often violent.

This film scores major points by absolutely keeping the audience guessing. At least until the third act when the film can likely conclude in no other way than it does. The film avoids making Charlie out to be a totally predictable sap who is just along for a wild ride with a crazy woman. Charlie has his own secrets, and a whole hidden side of his own that comes out when it has to. Demme places some marginally famous people in some truly odd cameos, and spends a little bit more time with peripheral characters than some people would. It gives the film a very "human" kind of feeling as we get to know at least a little something about even someone working as a waitress or at a motel. The film maybe meanders a bit here and there, but that is understandable since so much of it plays out like a road trip. The actors are exceptional, and the film is full of color and energy. Highly recommended. 9 of 10 stars.

The Hound.

Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) is outwardly a stuffy businessman in NYC. He tries to dine and dash, but gets called out by Lulu/Audrey Hankel (Melanie Griffith). She sees him as a secret rebel. She offers to drive him back to his office but instead takes him on a wild trip. She's stealing and sleeping with the married Charles in a motel. She brings him back to visit her mother and go to the class reunion as Charles' wife. Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta) and his girlfriend Irene (Margaret Colin) show up at the reunion and take Charles and Audrey for a drive. Ray turns out to be Audrey's ex-con husband and he holds up a convenience store.

Melanie Griffith delivers one of the most memorable character in cinema. She's a Manic Pixie Dream Girl before that term existed. She's also more three dimensional than that. Jeff Daniels is almost as good and shows his versatility. My main problem with him is the first half where he is supposedly a married man cheating on his loving wife. Instead of a compelling reveal later on, I would have started with Charles as a lonely non-married guy. It kept me from liking Charles and thinking that he's a lousy cheater. Ray Liotta is always great as a crazed maniac. It's a wild times.

Something Wild is the type of film many viewers today long for, a mid-budget comedy with reasonable stakes and a pleasing, laidback demeanor. There's nothing smug or selfish about the film; it's genuinely trying to please, and does so effortlessly, with broad appeal. It's got a great cast, including young up-and-comers Jeff Daniels, Ray Liotta, and Melanie Griffith, a greater director in Johnathon Demme, who would find his ultimate success in directing Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, and a great script, which bends, twists, and contorts to give a new perspective every half hour or so. What an unexpected, merry pleasure.

The film follows Charles Driggs, played by Daniels, an uptight yuppie who meets Audrey Hankel, played by Griffith. Audrey is a wild child, and soon convinces stiff Charles to ditch work and follow her to the country to meet her mother and attend her class reunion. The arrival of Ray Sinclair, played by Liotta, complicates matters further. It's a comfortable, nestled film, mostly taking place over the course of only a day.

The film is smartly written and directed, but it lives and dies with its three principle leads, who each turn in great work. All three build their characters from the ground up, exaggerating their central traits just enough to deliver the essential character information throughout. The script has little time for backstory or introductions, relying on the mannerisms and body cues of the cast to fill the audience in. It's a bold approach, but it works. The film also steadily shifts in tone and tension, demanding subtle tweaks to each performance as the film plays. Again, the cast delivers flawlessly.

Speaking of the script, it's a dandy. The premise is thin on its surface (fun-loving girl meets yuppie, yuppie loosens up) and the potential for excess cliché or exposition is high. Something Wild sidesteps these pratfalls with ease, setting its focus tightly on its characters and exposing their psyches early and often. One of the most peculiar but exciting elements is the shift in tone throughout. It's steady and assured, motivated and appropriately weighted.

Motivations change organically too; characters grow plausibly, in the course of only a day, because the film works holistically. Character growth feeds into theme, theme feeds into style, style feeds into substance. Something Wild is intrinsically opposed to the banality of corporate life, 80s corporate life specifically, and this resistance to banality motivates the action and characters. It's understood without explicit statement - everyone needs something wild in their life eventually. Viewers will be hard pressed to disagree.

Something Wild is a cult classic with greatness all around and throughout. It's an easy-going film that ratches up the tension slowly and thrives within its own details. All three central characters would go on to fantastic careers, as would its director, and it's easy to see why. They're likeable and confident, charismatic and convincing. The film itself is a neat little encapsulation of the 80s trying to escape itself, sick of its own cowardice and corporate kowtowing. It's also a refreshing, skewed take on the machismo of the era, with an unexpected but earned payoff.

Not even remotely corny like one would expect of a 1980s romantic comedy, this fierce, libidinous entertainment stars Jeff Daniels as Charlie, an externally button-down banker whose mojo is readily fluttered by audacity in women, and Melanie Griffith as Lulu, an alcoholic sex machine with an amply fertile mind. Daniels plays some of the same notes here that he used in Terms of Endearment, where he was the firm, competent, straitlaced husband and father who liked to have relations with perky coeds. He looks like he was born to wear a suit and a tie, but he has that insubordinate glint in the right light. Griffith's performance is founded not so much on sexual excitement as on nerve: She is able to persuade us, and Daniels, that she is likely to do almost anything, particularly if she thinks it might shock him.

Even while they're standing on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and she's making like she's charging him with theft, there's a spark between them. The casting is critical in a movie like this. There has to be some kind of brutish cohesion between the man and the woman or it doesn't make any difference how sharp the dialogue is. Once they've made their connection, Daniels freely goes along for the ride. After awhile she even takes his handcuffs off, although he sort of liked the idea of having lunch in a restaurant with the cuffs dangling from one of his wrists.

They drive down the East Coast from New York to Tallahasee, while she steals money from cash registers and he capsizes into the conscious daydream of the sensually exhausted. At Griffith's high school reunion, Daniels runs into the last person he wants to see, the accountant from his office. And Griffith runs into the last person she wants to see, her husband, Ray Liotta. I will stop here. The uncertainty of the tension must not be ruined.

If Demme and screenwriter E. Max Frye had developed this movie as a madcap comedy, it most likely wouldn't have worked as well. Their feat is to think their characters through before the very first scene. They know all about Charlie and Lulu, and so what happens after the confrontation outside that restaurant is virtually inescapable, cnsidering who they are and how they look at each other. This is one of those few movies where the story acts shocked by what the characters do, and not the other way around.