"MR LYNCH?"

"I don´t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn´t make sense."

David Lynch sits at the top table at the Wild at Heart press conference which tops and tails this year´s Cannes Film Festival. The room is packed to the ceiling with hundreds turned away. The most eagerly awaited film of the entire festival, Wild at Heart was also the very last one to be screened before everyone went home. This was not just the traditional suspense-building ploy of a public relations guru - the film was actually only completed one day before its Cannes premiere. It was then put in a case and taken to the Riviera as hand luggage by Lynch and his posse of stars.

"We were right up the wire," admits Lynch. "The gentleman at Swiss Air was very upset but finally he let it happen because it did fit under the seats."

A road movie-cum-romance, featuring some of the most explicit sexual activity every performed by Hollywood stars, Wild at Heart takes its title from Laura Dern´s line, "This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top". Which neatly sums up Lynch´s most outstanding work to date, loosely based on the book by Barry Gifford.

"I once looked at a painter named Frida Kahlo," says Isabella Rossellini, Perdida Durango in the movie and now sitting next to Lynch as his star and longtime partner," and I told David she looked quite appealing yet, with her eyebrows joined togetherm, very wild. And I said it would be an interesting character to play, an attractive, but very hairy woman. A year later he called me and offered me 'a small part where you can have those eyebrows, but you gotta have a blonde wig'. And that was it."

The accompanying press kit for Wild at Heart informs the hungry press corps that "David Lynch was an eagle scout in Missoula, Montana". And, er, that´s it, hence the relentless bombardment of questions here today.

Is, for example, asks one reporter, the film´s psychosexual intrigue organised around ... The Wizard of Oz?

"That snuck in along the way," confirms Lynch with an angelic smile.

"Mr Lynch," barks another reporter, "do you see the United States as a big tribe with wild animals and rock and roll instead of tom-toms?"

"Yes," replies Lynch. "I do."

"Let´s hear it straight, Mr Lynch," says a third. "Have you a complete, definitive, unexpurgated four-hour version up your sleeve or in your drawers?"

"You´d like to see this one, wouldn´t you?" teases Lynch.

"You bet," gasps the reporter.

"No," says Lynch.

He does confirm, however, that the European version of the film just screened is considerably softer than the original cut shown to preview audiences in the States.

"One scene had to be sliced," he admits, "because 100 people in one screening, and 120 people in the next walked out at once. I had to cut the scene for the sake of the whole picture, this violence was going over the line and ruining everything. I guess there is a magical line you can go up against but not across."

One more question to wind up Cannes 1990. "How can an eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana have such graphic visions of violence?" pipes a reporter.

"The ones I don´t put on screen are even worse," replies Lynch.-

"Care to expand on that, Mr Lynch?"

"No sir."

HENRI BEHAR