Wild at Heart remains an empow­er­ing depic­tion of female trauma

“Toto, I’ve a feel­ing we’re not in Kansas any­more.” Dorothy says this line excit­ed­ly – it’s thrilling to leave the drab sepia world of 1930s Amer­i­ca for the glo­ri­ous Tech­ni­col­or of Oz. It’s soon turned upside down, a puff of red smoke and the Wicked Witch of the West appears, doing every­thing she can to stop Dorothy return­ing home. For all its won­der, Oz isn’t home. Its uncan­ni­ness fright­ens her, and through sheer will pow­er she escapes. ​“There’s no place like home… There’s no place like home… There’s no place like home…”

When you’re under­go­ing Cog­ni­tive Behav­iour­al Ther­a­py (CBT) for Post-Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD), one tech­nique is to close your eyes and trans­port your­self to a safe space. For me, it’s my grand­par­ents’ house. My ther­a­pist says the mag­ic words I chose, and I’m sit­ting in my grandad’s arm­chair in their cosy liv­ing room, the scent of laven­der waft­ing through. We do this when my treat­ment trig­gers some­thing and I start to dis­as­so­ci­ate as my mind con­vinces me I’m reliv­ing the past. A click of the ruby slip­pers, ​“There’s no place like home…” and I’m safe again.

I hadn’t made this con­nec­tion between The Wiz­ard of Oz and my PTSD until I saw David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. Despite being released in 1990, it was one of those rare moments when a hand reached out, took mine, and told me it knew how I felt. It wasn’t what I’d expect­ed – wasn’t this just the pulpy one with Nico­las Cage in a snake­skin jack­et? I hadn’t thought of Lynch as an empa­thet­ic film­mak­er, as some­one capa­ble of tack­ling the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects phys­i­cal abuse has on women. In fact, if I’d known the film would be deal­ing with sex­u­al assault, I’d have avoid­ed it.

What dis­tin­guish­es the sex­u­al assault in Wild at Heart from Lynch’s oth­er films is that Lau­ra Dern’s Lula is giv­en full agency in its depic­tion. Unlike the laugh­ing gas-induced attacks in Blue Vel­vet or the mys­te­ri­ous mur­der of Lau­ra Palmer in Twin Peaks, we don’t see the act itself so there’s no risk of it being con­fused for nar­ra­tive plea­sure; we see only the after­ef­fects on a female char­ac­ter we instant­ly fall in love with. She’s fun-lov­ing, sexy, and in total com­mand of her­self. What’s more, her rela­tion­ship with Sailor (Cage) is unmis­tak­ably roman­tic, and their sex life is shown to be ful­fill­ing and con­sen­su­al. Light a match, extreme close-up of a burn­ing cig­a­rette, and we set­tle in for a stream of post-coital duo­logues con­sist­ing of star­tling trust and honesty.

It’s clear that Lula has told Sailor about her trau­ma before, and it’s through their healthy sex life that she refus­es to allow the rape to con­trol her – she’s a sur­vivor, not a vic­tim. I didn’t feel that way. Like Lula and the sta­tis­ti­cal major­i­ty of oth­er sur­vivors, I was assault­ed by some­one I already knew. Lula claims she couldn’t talk about it with her moth­er, and nei­ther could I – it wasn’t until I met my lov­ing boyfriend that I learned to respect myself, to iden­ti­fy the spi­ral of depres­sion I’d fall­en into. And just like Lula, a sig­nif­i­cant part of that recov­ery came through not only tol­er­at­ing but enjoy­ing sex.

That’s not to say those demons have been laid to rest – far from it. But being able to write about it is a sign I’m on the road to recov­ery. Wild at Heart showed me that you can appear to be bet­ter on the sur­face while invis­i­ble scars lurk under­neath. Just as I’m trig­gered by loud nois­es and sud­den move­ments, Lula’s flash­back erupts onto the screen when Sailor slams a win­dow shut. Lynch uses the visu­al lan­guage of film edit­ing to recre­ate a fac­sim­i­le of post-trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. A cig­a­rette calms her nerves, but it’s a short-term fix. Ther­a­py isn’t an option for a woman on the road, not least in its finan­cial cost, and her ​‘home’ in the domes­tic sense is total­ly dys­func­tion­al. She’s found a home in Sailor, and that’s beautiful.

While Lula clear­ly knows she needs Sailor, he’s less astute. He’s mis­guid­ed, com­mit­ted to an inde­pen­dent life of crime that sees him in and out of jail. In the end, he’s also Dorothy; after the Wiz­ard leaves in his hot air bal­loon, it takes Glin­da in her bub­ble-gum-pink orb to make him realise that his place is with Lula, that she is his home. Per­haps only Lynch could get away with a sequence like this in a film that’s oth­er­wise coher­ent. It’s a nec­es­sary apoth­e­o­sis – the Good Witch come to chase away the Wicked Witch of the West who fre­quent­ly appears onscreen in the place of the vio­lent acts com­mit­ted against Lula. Togeth­er they douse her in water until she melts into noth­ing. ​“Oh, what a world! What a world!”

The scene I found hard­est to watch in Wild at Heart sees Bob­by Peru (Willem Dafoe) taunt Lula. It realis­es the fear inher­ent to PTSD, that those trau­mas aren’t over, they’re ongo­ing and may come again. Against the peel­ing wall­pa­per of the bed­room our eyes are drawn to Lula’s blood-red heels as she draws on her cig­a­rette, a moment of soli­tary bliss. Then Bob­by asks to use her loo before press­ing him­self up against her, order­ing her to say, ​“Fuck me!” It’s clear he wants to intim­i­date her, and he leaves soon after, as the cam­era clos­es on her shoes as she clicks her heels. She doesn’t say any­thing, but the direct par­al­lel with Dorothy is heart-break­ing. It’s hard to escape from the night­mare when you’re liv­ing it.

In Wild at Heart, Lynch gives this seem­ing­ly tame ges­ture from The Wiz­ard of Oz, one of the most icon­ic images in cin­e­ma his­to­ry, new sig­nif­i­cance. Lula doesn’t need to say any­thing for us to get the mes­sage – it’s her silence in this scene that’s so arrest­ing, a real­is­tic depic­tion of how the body can shut down when it’s being assault­ed. She’s found her ther­a­peu­tic meth­ods, and we see her refusal to let it weigh her down. Her ruby slip­pers might not be mag­ic, but Lula reminds us that it’s pos­si­ble to leave our trou­bles behind, some­where over the rain­bow. I’d choose Kansas over Oz any day.