Wild

Jean-Marc Vallée has certainly been keeping busy, with this adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir sandwiched between last year’s Dallas Buyers Club and the now in post-production Demolition. But he doesn’t appear to be spreading himself too thin; though Wild shares a lot of themes with his McConaissance-defining AIDS drama, it has an added artfulness and subtlety that serves the material well.

Strayed, superbly played by Witherspoon, is a fascinating protagonist: complex and flawed, she attempts to discover herself on a mammoth hike across the treacherous Pacific Crest Trail from the US’s southernmost to northernmost border. Vallée intercuts this trip with visions of Strayed’s past in fractured, non-linear snippets as she’s prompted by the present to think back to the moments that shaped her, both good and bad. The elegant result is that we come to know Strayed almost in step with her own realisation of self; the physical element of her journey, though never less than dauntingly rendered and featuring some surprising encounters, playing second fiddle to the spiritual. An honest and insightful work.