Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula

In the visual equivalent of sound bites, novelist and poet Gifford ( Ghosts No Horse Can Carry ; Port Tropique ) cuts to the heart with sharply focused shots of young lovers on the lam. ``You mark me the deepest,'' says 20-year-old Lula Pace to Sailor Ripley as they're reunited after Sailor's two-year stint in prison for manslaughter. Though it means breaking parole for Sailor, the two leave North Carolina to escape Lula's fiercely disapproving mother Marietta, who hires a friend, short-story writing private eye Johnnie Farragut, to track them. Innocents on the road but wise to the needs of their hearts, Lula and Sailor tool along from Louisiana to Texas in a white '75 Bonneville convertible, and, when the money runs out, land in Big Tuna, where Sailor will run afoul of the law again. Sweet and foolish, pure but ordained to be defeated, Sailor and Lula represent a bittersweet ideal. A film of the novel, directed by David Lynch, is in the works. (Mar.)