Rating: NNNN
MULHOLLAND DRIVE (David Lynch) is a film I had to view twice. Seeing it again, the sheer oddity of the story — two young women (Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring) meet, and their lives become intertwined after one of them staggers away from a car crash on Mulholland Drive — gives way to a certain logic. Mulholland Drive picks up several favourite Lynch motifs, particularly his wounded dark woman/innocent blond girl dichotomy, and plays with them. Here he simply removes the male from the equation, and, yes, that means exactly what you think it means. It may all be a dream at the moment of death. But whose death? The synopsis is a single sentence — “a love story in the city of dreams.” But whose dreams are these in a city of gargoyles, Lynch regulars and sunlight that makes flesh look like bruised fruit? You can see the dangling bits of narrative and character that would have been expanded in the series he proposed to ABC. Robert Forster has a single scene as a police detective and never returns. What happens to the world’s unluckiest hit man? Still, the film’s unexpected shifts and erotic nightmare tone make Mulholland Drive one of the year’s more astonishing offerings. 147 minutes. NNNN (JH)
