Review: Wild
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Vallée handles Wild with an actor's-first touch that brings out the best in Witherspoon and everyone around her.
City Paper grade: B+
There's an early sequence in Jean-Marc Vallée's adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's 2012 memoir that would fall on its ass in the hands of a less conscientious director. Strayed, played with a diminutive but palpable ferocity by Reese Witherspoon, heave-hos alone in a crappy motel room, struggling to shoulder an enormous backpack and begin her hike up the Pacific Crest Trail. Since Strayed forced herself into the journey as a prescription for her destructive life, it's easy to see how quickly the scene could devolve into the corniest kind of lone-wolf metaphor — oh, the pack represents her problems! But Vallée, fresh off his Dallas Buyers Club high, handles it, and most of Wild, with an actor's-first touch that brings out the best in Witherspoon and everyone around her.
Splicing the gauzy, atmospheric highlights of a 1,000-mile trek with a variety of raw flashbacks, Vallée is careful not to make an arms-akimbo heroine out of Strayed, whose battles with addiction destroyed her relationship with her exasperated husband (Thomas Sadowski). Though the connection between Strayed's anguish and the death of mother (Laura Dern) is made transparent, it's often difficult to figure out whether it's appropriate to cheer her on — and it seems Witherspoon wanted it this way. Marrying the contrarian pluck of her past roles with a trail-ready edge that bristles at the lightest touch, she's the perfect actor to play an imperfect woman. Vallée's only real trip-up is his fealty to the source material, which shows up in the form of florid voice-overs explaining things we already understand.
