Product Description

A daring double-life leads a beautiful young woman down a silken path of sex, scandal and greed in this steamy, provocative thriller. Bank exec by day - high priced call girl by night, Alex gets in deeper than she ever imagined when she meets charismatic millionaire Bruno Buckingham and his stunning, enigmatic wife. Now, in a slow, exquisite seduction, Alex will be pulled into Buckingham's perverse world of fast-cash and kinky thrills - and into an ever telescoping money-laundering scheme that will bring her face to face with pure corruption - and the very depths of desire. Anne Heche, Christopher Walken, Joan Chen

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97512 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-05-16
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English

Amazon.com
Before Anne Heche came to prominence as the lover (and then ex-lover) of Ellen DeGeneres, she carved out a career as a sharp, intelligent actress, someone who could save a movie by appearing on the fringes, as in The Juror, for instance. Mixed in with supporting roles were a few indie leads--Wild Side is one of the latter, despite Heche's third billing. And a very strange item it is. Heche plays a banking go-getter who moonlights as a high-class call girl, with the movie hinting that the two professions may not be all that dissimilar. A liaison with a crooked financier (Christopher Walken in extremis) and later with his wife (Joan Chen) puts our heroine in a very confusing situation, especially when she gets in the way of a chauffeur/undercover cop/predator, played by Steven Bauer in high Eric Roberts mode. If the story is not always coherent, the actors nevertheless shoot off sparks, and the movie pulses with a weird energy all its own.

Wild Side was the last picture directed by Donald Cammell, whose 1970 film Performance (co-directed by Nicolas Roeg) is one of the defining films of its era. This cut of Wild Side is credited to the pseudonymous "Franklin Brauner" because Cammell was unhappy with the radical re-edit performed without his consent. A director's cut had been prepared, but Cammell did not live to see it. He committed suicide in 1996, leaving behind a very small output of films in his foreshortened career. Wild Side, even in its cut form, carries his signature traits of authentic disorientation and intense, twisted sex. And while it's a guaranteed perk for prurient viewers, the torrid coupling of Heche and Chen is just one equation in the film's convoluted sexual arithmetic. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

NOT THE DIRECTOR'S CUT; DO NOT BUY THIS JUNK
How DISGUSTING that this film has been put out in its awful BUTCHERED version, the one Donald Cammell took his name off, just to capitalize on the recent big public Lesbian love-affair of Anne Heche and Ellen De Generais. This is the version that has been showing up on lists of the worst films ever made, BOMBS, etc., and needs to be thrown on the trash heap where it belongs. And if that weren't enough of a disgrace and insult to Cammell's artistic vision, the Full-Screen Only specification should clue you in to what kind of charlatans you're dealing with here. You should know for your own good that people are just trying to take your money and run when they offer only a full-screen version on a DVD!

Fortunately, through the efforts of some of Cammell's friends we now have the original version which should be put out on a good DVD as soon as possible. In fact, I just saw (at the American Cinemateque in Hollywood)a pristine print of that ORIGINAL DIRECTOR'S CUT, meticulously reconstructed by Frank Mazzolla, Cammell's editor, from detailed notes Cammell left right before he shot himself, and was COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY by it (no pun intended). I haven't laughed so hard and been thoroughly fascinated at the same time for a long, long time. The great, very long, leisurely paced and quite erotic Lesbian scene between Anne Heche and Joan Chen is maybe the least of the original film's virtues. Cammell's vision seamlessly puts together amazing cinematography, hilarious farce, off-kilter dialogue that goes everywhere you don't expect it to, virtuoso editing, and above all, the semi-improvised performances of their careers from the three main leads (Anne Heche, Christopher Walken, Steven Bauer), into a near-masterpiece that only a talentless producer could've ever turned into a 'bomb,' a film, that in the final analysis, can hold its own against "Performance," and "White of the Eye" (the two mind-blowers that made Cammell a living legend, albeit one who couldn't find work!).

You might ask who's Steven Bauer? Steven Bauer is the guy who's mostly known for having played Al Pacino/Tony Montana's brother in De Palma's "Scarface." Now you know EXACTLY who he is, because he was so excellent in "Scarface" that people always wonder what happened to the guy! Well, he's done quite a lot of mediocre stuff just to keep working, but when given the chance, as here, under Cammell's direction, he's done truly exceptional work. The scene where Bauer has to 'bend over' to prove his loyalty to Christopher Walken and has his underwear torn off, with a non-chalant Anne Heche in the room amused by the goings-ons, is maybe one of the two or three most hilarious, daring, pulling-out-all-the-stops, semi-improvised virtuoso acting scenes in recent cinematic memory. This film will yet have its day!

Wild Side
The only edition available on DVD is apparently the R-rated one which does not contain the hot scene with Heche and Chen.

Lesbian Passion-Self Discovery
Overall, the story line and acting are not really that good. Hence the 3 star rating. BUT! , I give the lesbian romance 5 stars. Compared to other passionate love scenes in lesbian movies, such as in GIA, I haven't seen passion between two women portrayed as well as Anne Heche and Joan Chen did in The Wild Side. Their union was tastefully filmed and closely resembled lesbian sex. I am anxiously awaiting the 2000 release (The Wild Side-Director's Cut) which is reported to have a different love scene. All too often, lesbian love and sex is misrepresented by actresses who truly do not understand lesbian romance. It is a rare find when you can capture lesbian romance in its raw form. Other movies which do this effectively, regardless of the plot and acting, include, Bound, When Night is Falling, and Claire of the Moon, to name a few. If you rent or buy this film, I suggest you do it for the lesbian theme. I believe you'll find it quite stirring!