Mother-daughter relationships in cinema rarely progress beyond adolescent displays of irritation, embarrassment, and angst. The antagonists may be an overbearing mother and her disobedient daughter (Pride & Prejudice, Titanic) or a cool mom and her selfish, narcissistic teen (Amy Poehler and Rachel McAdams, respectively, in Mean Girls). Jean-Marc Vallee’s Wild—adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s nonfiction book about her struggle with grief and addiction as she trekked across the Pacific Crest Trail—is something different, a multifaceted exposition of a mother-daughter connection so extraordinary and difficult it ranks with the ones in Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003).
In Wild this friction between mother and daughter is most evident when a teenage Cheryl, being chauffeured around by Bobbi, pontificates about how enlightened and refined she is compared to her mother. She’s merciless in describing her superiority over her mother, but this moment also reveals the true disparity between them. Cheryl may have been exposed to literature and philosophy to a greater extent than her mother has, but she’s inexperienced and naïve; Bobbi, by contrast, is wiser, kinder, and ultimately more graceful.
