‘Untamed Heart’ Is A Movie That Could Only Have Existed in the ‘90s

Untamed Heart is one of those great romantic weepies that are inherently problematic, but, at the same time, endlessly re-watchable. And it’s now streaming on Hulu! Starring Marissa Tomei, 2 years after her surprise Oscar win for My Cousin Vinny, and Christian Slater, during the absolute peak of his powers, Untamed Heart is set in the romantic (?) city of Minneapolis, Minnesota in the dead of winter. Tomei plays Caroline, a waitress and a struggling beauty school student who can’t seem to meet a nice guy, you know? She lives at home with her parents and kills time at the diner with her best friend, Cindy, played by Rosie Perez (!), who does not even try to her hide thick Brooklyn accent.

So not exactly a hopeful situation, right? Wrong! Little does she know she is loved from afar by Adam (Slater), a shy busboy with a great head of hair, who never speaks but always seems to be watching, which turns out to be a good thing at first. In a twisted/cute meet that only the 90s could produce, Caroline first becomes aware of Adam when he saves her from an attempted RAPE by two bar patrons who follow her home after her shift.

It’s a truly horrifying sequence that remains just as heart wrenching and infuriating in the present day. Adam delivers her right to her doorstep and stays with her all night until she wakes up.

Yes, that’s right, he knows where she lives and reveals that he frequently follows her home to make sure she’s safe, which, while potentially creepy, seems nice considering what has just happened, right?

As Caroline grows more and more intrigued by Adam, Cindy spills that he grew up in a Catholic orphanage and is rumored to have a baboon heart. YES, A BABOON HEART. Caroline is skeptical, but then she sees that scar.

Yes, that is what passed for a heart transplant scar in the ‘90s. Truly, truly ridiculous. Even more intrigued by Adam now, Caroline opens up to him and he leaves her a Christmas present… a Christmas tree, which he installs in her bedroom WHILE SHE IS SLEEPING. Yes, he breaks into her parents’ home to do this! Endearing in the 90s? Alarming today?

Untamed Heart works because of the two committed performances by Tomei and Slater. At a climactic moment in the film, Adam shares the story that the nuns told him to explain his diseased heart: his father was an adventurer who sought the baboon king’s rubies to heal his son, but left the jungle with the king’s heart instead. That the 26-year-old still believes this story speaks to his raw vulnerability and naïveté, but also leads to the key line in this extraordinary melodrama:

The movie only gets more bonkers from here, but you won’t find a better way to spend 102 minutes of your life. Given the brutal attempted rape sequence and the whole “the male love interest is actually a stalker” thing, Untamed Heart truly is a product of the oblivious ‘90s. Because of the strength of Marisa Tomei’s and Christian Slater’s performances, Untamed Heart remains re-watchable… so slide out of the post MeToo age we now live in for just a bit, suspend your disbelief, and enjoy this strange little cinematic artifact from the long ago 90s.

Where to stream Untamed Heart