Reese Witherspoon gets down and dirty in Wild, based on Cheryl Strayed’s best-selling memoir

AMERICA’S former sweetheart Reese Witherspoon plays against type in a real-life story as a troubled woman on a voyage of self-discovery.

Wild (MA15+)

Director: Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers’ Club)

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Gaby Hoffman.

Rating: ****

Life as a walk in progress

In Wild, we are presented with a slow-burning, true story of achieving self-discovery and finding redemption in places most people wouldn’t dare look.

Reese Witherspoon stars as Cheryl Strayed, a young woman reeling from one sudden tragedy and two major life mistakes that came at her in quick succession.

Her mother died. Her marriage failed. Her light experimentation with heroin gradually became a heavy habit.

Into the wild ... Reese Witherspoon. Picture: AP Photo/Fox Searchlight Pictures

In a make-or-break bid to turn her life around, Strayed embarks on an arduous 1700km hike along the challenging Pacific Coast Trail (PCT).

Her reasoning for taking such a drastic step will become clear much later in the movie.

As Wild begins and Strayed is taking her first tentative steps along the PCT, all we can really ascertain is that she hardly seems equipped to go the distance.

Strayed’s backpack is over-crammed with materials she does not need. Her boots are half a size too small. She has brought along the wrong fuel with which to heat her food. The finer points of regular hydration are lost on her.

Roughing it ... Reese Witherspoon. Picture: Supplied

How the hell will Cheryl Strayed make it all the way north from the Mexican border to the Canadian border?

The answer Wild comes up with is not so nearly important as the questions it provokes about what pushed Strayed to such extreme lengths in the first place.

Of course, flashbacks — many of them — are an absolute necessity here, but not one of them reduce the ever-building emotional momentum of the experience depicted here.

Scripted by award-winning author Nick Hornby from Strayed’s own best-selling book, Wild slowly but surely enters the frazzled mind of its subject in vividly moving detail.

Reese Witherspoon stars in Wild. Picture: Supplied

Strayed’s blind stumble towards clarity meets the right match in Witherspoon, who wisely opts not to smooth down the rough edges of a difficult character.

The real Cheryl Strayed never sugar-coated her shortcomings, and the film follows her lead with admirable conviction. While she remains hard to warm to right up until the end of Wild, a willing empathy with her plight is never any problem.

Originally published as Reese Witherspoon gets down and dirty in Wild, based on Cheryl Strayed’s best-selling memoir