Practically Wild

1998's Wild Things is on two Criterion playlists this month and then it'll be leaving the streamer at the end of the month. These factors felt like mild pressure to watch the film. I couldn't quite remember if I'd seen it or not. I knew Matt Dillon and Denise Richards were in it. I had a vague memory of Bill Murray being in the film and I thought, "If Bill Murray's in the film, I've seen it. If he's not, then I'm thinking of another movie." I looked at the cast list and didn't see Bill Murray so I started watching the movie. Then, at the end of the cast credits was "and Bill Murray." He sneaked in. I had seen it, probably all the way back in the VHS rental days. So at least this was probably my first time seeing it in widescreen.

Few movies are so twisted, by which I mean, it has a lot of plot twists. Characters who are set up as having one kind of personality and set of motives are revealed to have a different, more sinister set of motives and completely different personalities. It all boils down to a pretty cynical idea; you can't trust your impressions of anyone, everyone is ready to rob, cheat, and kill.

It has a reputation as an erotic thriller but there's only a couple sex scenes and a few shots of nudity. I think the label comes from the fact that Neve Campbell and Denise Richards kiss twice and Kevin Bacon has a very brief full frontal nudity scene. But mostly this is a movie in which people scheme and conspire and nurse grudges. Murray plays a cocksure lawyer and he's pretty amusing. The film's clever and decadent but not really insightful or fulfilling. The film manipulates you into thinking one way about the characters before revealing something different and, fair enough, manipulative people exist in real life who manufacture virtuous facades. But it is possible to see through them in life. A better movie than Wild Things might have given the viewer some indications of the characters' true natures. It all feels a bit arbitrary as it is. As Roger Ebert quipped in his review, the film is still explaining itself in the closing credits which are interspersed with new scenes to make it seem more natural that certain characters turned out to be scoundrels. One character is shown to be sailor in order to explain how she new how to pilot a yacht in a crucial scene though, if you come to think about it, it makes very little sense for this particular character to be an avid sailor.

Wild Things is available on The Criterion Channel.