Something Wild

Something Wild is funny, sexy and generous towards its oddballs; we recommend it, with a reservation about where the script takes them. Jonathan Demme takes the familiar prospect of a respectable man being led astray and gives the strangers around him more attention than that premise requires. The pleasure comes from meeting them, watching them and wondering what they might do. The trouble comes when Frye’s screenplay has to make all that wandering serve a plot.

Jeff Daniels makes Charles Driggs’s self-consciousness funny without asking us to despise him for it. Opposite Melanie Griffith’s Audrey Hankel, he seems to be working out how much enthusiasm he can safely admit. Griffith gives their early encounters an ease that makes his hesitation funnier, and their attraction does not need explaining. We laughed at his efforts to look comfortable with her sexual confidence, then felt unexpectedly fond of him. Daniels keeps the embarrassment small enough to recognise.

As Ray Sinclair, Ray Liotta gives the film a threat that makes us watch him closely. His force sharpens the responses of the other two leads, without reducing them to supporting players in their own story. Griffith, in particular, has enough range to keep Audrey from becoming merely an invitation for Charles to enjoy himself. Demme remains interested in her when the easy joke would be to make everything about his discomfort.

Tak Fujimoto’s cinematography makes room for faces, including those belonging to people who will never carry the story. That attention supports Demme’s interest in the ordinary places the journey passes through, giving us reasons to look beyond the central couple. Norma Moriceau’s production design and costumes make the film’s 1980s fashions hard to miss. Some choices now draw attention to themselves, but the care given to the surroundings helps the minor encounters feel like something more than interruptions.

Craig McKay’s editing gives the opening a welcome headlong pace without losing the small hesitations that make Daniels funny. The changes of mood are less consistently persuasive, although the performances provide continuity when the storytelling becomes abrupt. Laurie Anderson and John Cale provide the music, alongside a rock soundtrack that makes the journey feel sociable and unpredictable. The songs sustain the excitement of going somewhere new, even when the plot becomes easier to anticipate.

The principal weakness is Frye’s increasingly conventional plotting. The opening lets attraction and bad judgement set the pace, and for a while almost any encounter seems worth following. As the crime story becomes more insistent, it leaves less room for the casual comedy and incidental people that first interested us. A smaller reservation is that petty crime is treated as an attractive habit rather too readily. Demme and the cast keep it entertaining, but the later situations are less surprising than the behaviour in those early encounters.

Within the comedy of a respectable man getting into trouble, Demme’s warmth makes a substantial difference. He does not assume that eccentricity makes someone ridiculous, or that a small part deserves only a single joke. His attention to the people surrounding Charles and Audrey gives the film pleasures beyond the couple’s chemistry. Choose it for Daniels and Griffith, and allow for a script that becomes less adventurous than they are.