Spoilers - I thought, when reading the description, that the story was about a young woman who decides that the wilderness is the best place for her and follows her journey and adaptation into it. But no, Wild starts with a slightly unhappy introvert deciding what she needs is to keep a wolf in her apartment. She sees the wolf one day before she gets on the bus and becomes obsessed with capturing it. She is portrayed as a bit socially awkward, not wanting to party with her co-workers and not in a relationship like her sister, whose boyfriend comes off as kind of an immature dick. Annia, the main character, is attentive to her grandfather, dying in a hospital, but not very friendly with anyone else. She also seems to have a hobby of target shooting. She manages to trap the wolf with the help of some factory workers and strips of cloth and sticks him in a room in her apartment. Because of her grandfather's illness she is allowed to take time off from work and she spends the time trying to get to know her new soulmate through a hole she has smashed into the wall. Eventually neighbors start complaining and she has to decide once and for all not to go back to work at all, which leads to her having sex with her boss on his desk, and when he leaves she takes dump on it and accidently sets it on fire by dropping the cigarette he gave her. Meanwhile, the wolf has managed to escape the room, knocking out a suspiciously square hole in the wall, and she thinks they will run away and be wild lovers together in the wilderness. Her boss actually tracks her down and finds her with her wolf on the roof of her apartment building. He tries to convince her to return to work and normal life, but she lets the wolf loose, and her wild side kills her old conventional side. She runs off with the wolf after calling an ambulance and they run through a sandy waste that looks more like a construction site without machinery than a space near a German city, and when she collapses in the sand in exhaustion the wolf lies down next to her. As night falls, she drags herself into some weeds to sleep. In the morning she is deliriously happy to see the sun, even though the wolf isn't around, and it is implied that she has found true happiness in her newly wild state.
I was hoping for something more in the wild, not just somebody trying to force the wild to fit itself into their lives. Annia seems to want to keep living her normal life at first, but with the influence of the wolf to make her bolder and better. She kidnaps the poor animal rather than go into the wild herself at first. Her progression from wallflower to woman of the wilds is shown by her increasing sexual appetite, since only animals with no control actually want sex apparently. In the beginning she seems embarrassed and bored by her co-workers' antics at the party, and disgusted by her accidental spying on her sister with her boyfriend, but by the end of the film, when she is "wild", she's ready to have sex with cleaners in her boss' office before she has demanding sex with him. Her awakening of sorts comes when the wolf licks her face and she runs out of her apartment to slide down the banister and get off. Then she comes back to make scrambled eggs for breakfast like after any hook-up. I guess the movie is a message against the civilizing forces of our lives as unnatural, and a call to feel our true natures more keenly, although it also shows that we have to give up the comforts that we enjoy to be truly wild and free.
I passed by Cervecería l'Europe before the film, just to get a look at what they had for Founder's Week. There was an old ale I hadn't tried before, that I recall, which seemed like just the thing. It's something new, and a chance to take. Just like going wild, right? So, I got my Curmudgeon, and it was a nice nutty brown, with a healthy head, not very aromatic but maybe just a little sweet. Oh my god, it tastes like Christmas. Really. It is sweet, but there's also a bit of spice lurking around, cinnamon or nutmeg perhaps. Besides that, there's the sweetness, which makes me think of a rum mixed drink. Eggnog, maybe. It's a little bit heavy, with a feeling of something aged and concentrated in flavor. Still, very tasty, and definitely something to try...before running off into the woods.
Supplier: Cervecería l'Europe
Price: €6.30/pint
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