Wild

Wild (15)

USA 2014  115 mins  Dir: Jean-Marc Vallée  Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Gaby Hoffmann, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadowski

It’s been observed that in order to secure a Best Actress Oscar nomination these days, you have to play a suffering woman. That certainly seems to be true of 80% of this year’s nominees. With her matted hair and unsightly bruises, a make-up-free Reese Witherspoon pushes the boat out as backpacker Cheryl Strayed. And just in case you’re wondering, we’re repeatedly told how whiffy she is. In the very first, look-away-now scene, she peels off a manky, bloodied toenail with a yowl of agony and promptly loses her boots in a ravine. “Everything hurts all the time,” she eventually exclaims, as though addressing Oscar voters directly.

Adapted by Nick Hornby from Strayed’s bestselling memoir, Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallée’s episodic drama certainly covers all bases, from misery memoir to Into the Wild-style handsomely photographed wilderness adventure yarn and lightly feminist “You Go, Girl!” empowerment drama.

We meet Cheryl as she embarks on her epic 1,100 mile solo trek along the Pacific Crest Trail that runs from the Mexican border to Canada. Strikingly ill-prepared, she battles to stay upright with an overloaded backpack and quickly finds that she’s packed the wrong kind of gas for her portable stove, which reduces her to surviving on “cold mush”. A series of flashbacks are woven into the narrative to sketch in the events that led her to this daunting undertaking. Dad was an “abusive, alcoholic asshole” and radiant beloved mum (Dern, wasted in a rather underwritten role) succumbed to cancer at just 45, prompting Cheryl’s downward spiral into junkiedom and promiscuity, much to the dismay of her hubby of seven years (Sadowski).

Probably because they reflect accurately the vulnerability and apprehension of a lone woman in the wilderness, each of Cheryl’s encounters along the trail (a farmer, a pair of hunters, a mellow Deadhead, a bloke who claims to a journalist interviewing “hobos”, etc) feels like the menacing opening reel of a horror movie. In a persuasive, unflattering performance, Witherspoon perspires heavily, swears copiously and mumbles to herself as she trudges along Cheryl’s arduous trail of redemption – almost allowing us to forget that it’s Ms Legally Blonde shooting up and enjoying a random alleyway shag in those scuzzy flashbacks. Yes, she’s determined to “walk my way back to the woman my mother thought I was”, but, thanks to the talent involved, her journey circumnavigates most of the greetings card homilies that plague such cheesy self-discovery drivel as Eat Pray Love or Hector and the Search for Happiness. It also makes a pleasant change to see a man cast in the helpless, hand-wringing spouse role.