This fascinating comedy questions what we mean when we use words like "nature" and "civilization." Lila (Patricia Arquette,
i Lost Highway
i0 ,
i True Romance
i0 ), a nature writer who grows hair all over her body, falls in love with Nathan (Tim Robbins,
i The Player
i0 ,
i The Hudsucker Proxy
i0 ), a scientist attempting to teach table manners to mice. While hiking in the woods, they discover Puff (Rhys Ifans,
i Notting Hill
i0 ), a man raised in the wild since childhood, whom Nathan seizes as a test subject for his experiments--and soon these three, along with Nathan's French lab assistant (Miranda Otto) are embroiled in criss-crossed love affairs as they (and the audience) attempt to figure out what it means to be true to one's own nature. Though
i Human Nature
i0 isn't as surefooted as
i Being John Malkovich
i0 (which was also written by distinctive screenwriter Charlie Kaufman), it has moments of startling comic genius.
i --Bret Fetzer