How often do you get Barbet Schroeder, Gerard Depardieu and Nestor Almendros together to shoot a film about a burglar who ends up falling in love with the dominatrix whose dungeon he’s unwittingly tried to rob? In a scene at the very beginning of Schroeder’s exquisitely paced, beautifully executed Maitresse the tone is brilliantly set for the relationship – and thus the film itself – through Almendros’ meticulously composed images. His camera captures Depardieu’s fair Olivier and his dark-haired partner-in-crime (whose bad idea it was to burglarize the “downstairs apartment”) in a hornet’s nest of their own making, caught in the act by Bulle Ogier’s “Maitresse” Ariane, and subsequently handcuffed to her radiator and guarded by a vicious Doberman named Texas.

But wait––if this doesn’t sound like a setup straight from the twisted mind of David Lynch I don’t know what does. Indeed, what’s most striking about the erotically charged scene that follows is how closely the psychological power dynamics of Schroeder’s Maitresse parallel the infamous “Bobby Peru seduces Lula” scene from Wild at Heart. In both cases no actual sex takes place. Instead there’s a steamy sadist/predator (Bobby Peru, Ariane) sinking his/her teeth into a piece of lost prey (Lula, Olivier). Both Lula and Olivier are turned on against their will, psychologically “raped,” so stunned at losing control that they’re not even fully aware of the situation they’re in, let alone how to escape it. The difference lies in the relationship between the characters. Lula is rendered helpless until Bobby releases her when he’s “gotta get going.” She’s just a toy for Bobby to kill time with in the afternoon, whereas Ariane plays for keeps – a spider whose web encompasses. Ariane takes over her “victims” wholly, completely and unapologetically. And like Bobby knowing enough to drop in on Lula unannounced – ensuring her defenses will be down – Ariane takes advantage of the element of surprise (burglars dropping in unannounced – how convenient!), wielding it like a stun gun before the attack.

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“No tongue – my lipstick,” Diane Ladd’s conniving Marietta Fortune admonishes at the beginning of Wild at Heart, flirting with Harry Dean Stanton’s Johnnie Farragut, while perfectly setting the tone for the tantalizing sexual games to follow. Lynch’s typically bizarre noir contains one of the steamiest foreplay scenes ever to grace the indie screen. Strangely, this kinky non-sex scene involves not Laura Dern’s Lula and Nicolas Cage’s Sailor Ripley (whose love scenes are saturated with such hyper-real color and artistic angles as to overshadow the screwing), but the childlike Lula and Willem Dafoe’s greasy, so-creepy-he’s-charismatic Bobby Peru (”Just like the country,” he drawls, introducing himself to Lula and Sailor outside the hotel they’re all staying at, sliding snakelike into Wild at Heart nearly an hour and twenty minutes fashionably late). Dressed in black, sporting a Clark Gable moustache, Bobby’s the ultimate contrast to Dern’s big blonde hairdo, red lipstick painted, 20-year-old piece of mentally damaged white trash. That the episode doesn’t culminate in predictable fornication only proves that the iconoclastic director truly understands how to harness the power of the erotic chase––that is, that it’s hotter than the catch.

I first saw Wild at Heart on the big screen at a more innocent time in my life, when S&M conjured up only images of women wearing corsets and stilettos, bearing whips and canes. But seeing the above scene between Bobby and Lula hit a nerve in me, in fact several. It was the only time I can remember actually feeling embarrassed at the movies, voyeuristically observing this charged encounter onscreen. The characters were both fully dressed, no fucking was taking place – so why did I feel like I was witnessing the dirtiest hardcore porn?

Probably because I was. Bobby and Lula engage in a power play game which renders Lula stripped psychologically naked. Instead of tearing off each other’s clothes they’re clawing at each other’s psyches. The sexual act pales in comparison.

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