Wild (***)

Living in a busy city, it becomes easy to forget about the appeal and beauty you find in nature. The smell of a burning fire, the sound of crickets in the night. There's almost something therapeutic about it. In a way, that becomes the hypothesis of Jean-Marc Vallee's latest film, as a woman hikes up the Pacific coast (nearly 1,000 miles) in order to find some sort of self-redemption.

As the director of last year's Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club, it's easy to see the touch of Vallee's direction. In many ways these two are stories on opposite sides of the same coin. After a tragic death in her family and a nasty divorce from her husband of 7 years, Cheryl Strayed (stray like a dog) decides to cleanse her body and mind of toxins and restraint. She packs a large pack filled with water, food, and a tent, and decides to make a 3-month trek north to Oregon, where she plans to spend the rest of her life.

The movie, like Buyers Club, functions with subtitles illustrating the amount of time spent on her journey, and a minimal soundtrack as Cheryl spends some time soul searching and cooking up some hot mush on the campfire. We are thrust dead into the middle of her story, and learn through flashbacks and narration the means by which her life has led to this point.

As far as acting goes, Reese Witherspoon does a grounded job of holding the film together - as it is essentially a one-woman show. Unlike the "good girl" we have come to know her for in films like Walk the Line and Legally Blonde, here she gets down and dirty. Laura Dern as her mother also has a very simplistic truth to her. In the face of abuse and hardships, here is a woman who just keeps smiling, if only for the sake of her children.

The assembly feels like a student film, and we are barraged endlessly with voice overs and brief flashbacks as if to explain every single thought Cheryl has running through her head. My God, when the tent is dark and she repeatedly turns on the flashlight, we don't need to hear her say "I'm scared of the dark." You can understand the director's idea, but in the execution it becomes a muddled assembly of cuts and almost pretentious narration where simple emotion was intended.

Like Into the Wild, this is a film based on a personal memoir. Here, Cheryl comes out with a happy ending, for Christopher McCandless, the ending was much more absolute. There's something about being one with nature that has clearly fascinated people over the years, and the written word is a beautiful way to communicate ideas and thoughts. For a film to work in this regard, though, a bit more caution is required. Nothing ever needs to be spelled out in full.

(Awards potential: Best Actress (Witherspoon), Best Supporting Actress (Dern))