Mulholland Drive

Released 2001
Stars Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Ann Miller
Directed by David Lynch

Pandora couldn't resist opening the forbidden box containing all the delusions of mankind, and let's just say David Lynch, in Mulholland Drive, indulges a similar impulse. Employing a familiar film noir atmosphere to unravel, as he coyly puts it, "a love story in the city of dreams," Lynch establishes a foreboding but playful narrative in the film's first half before subsuming all of Los Angeles and its corrupt ambitions into his voyeuristic universe of desire. Identities exchange, amnesia proliferates, and nightmare visions are induced, but not before we've become enthralled by the film's two main characters: the dazed and sullen femme fatale, Rita (Laura Elena Harring), and the pert blonde just-arrived from Ontario (played exquisitely by Naomi Watts) who decides to help Rita regain her memory. Triggered by a rapturous Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison's "Crying," Lynch's best film since Blue Velvet splits glowingly into two equally compelling parts.

Summary by Fionn Meade

Is this a great film, or is it a case of the emperor who wore no clothes? I can see why some people were upset with the last half hour, because it completely demolished everything that had led up to it. But Is that true? Maybe it lent poignancy to a story that would have otherwise simply been an off-kilter film noir. I don't think there's a right answer here. When the characters started switching identities, and everything basically got thrown into a blender, the movie lost me for about ten minutes. I felt like Lynch was screwing with us. Here he had come up with an extremely entertaining and fresh entry into the noir genre, but then he threw it away to satisfy some desire to be bizarre. After a bit, though, it started to make sense. It was obvious throughout the first two hours that something wasn't right. The word that continuously ran through my mind from the car accident all the way to the finale was "skewed." Everything was skewed. The performances were definitely skewed. Remember Betty getting off the plane as "Suzi Sunshine" and the elderly couple who chuckled ominously in their limo after they left. The whole film was this way. Nothing seemed real. Would someone really sit at a negotiating table and slowly spit his cappuccino into a napkin in a mock vomit? There were many many clues that we were watching a dream. Betty even said early in the film, "I just came here from Deep River, Ontario and now I'm in this... dream place." Then you had the isolated scene of one cop telling his partner about a nightmare he'd been having, which ended with a bogeyman scaring him to death. Also, right before Betty "wakes up," there's the scene in the theater where "everything is prerecorded--nothing is real." There were so many clues it was obvious we weren't watching reality, therefore I don't think it's fair to accuse Lynch of cheating at the end. I did feel that way for about ten minutes, but then I started to understand what was happening. Diane (Betty) had gone insane from jealousy and hired someone to kill her lesbian lover (I love saying those words), Camilla. I don't think everything we saw was a dream, because I think some of it was conscious musings from an insane mind. In other words, daydreaming by someone who had been pushed over the edge.

One of the coolest things about this movie was the undercurrent of sexual tension between Betty and Rita. My wife thought I was crazy, but it was driving me nuts. There were sparks electrifying the screen every time these two gorgeous women were in the same room, but I was afraid nothing would come of it since this movie was originally going to be a pilot for a tv show. I must say I found it extremely frustrating. Then, finally, this tension was consummated in one of the sexiest love scenes I can remember. These two unknowns had an incredible chemistry together that never seemed forced, and they were mesmerizing. Other than the love scenes, my favorite scene was the creepy one with the cowboy. "If you do good, you'll see me one more time. If you do bad, you'll see me two more times. Goodnight." That gave me goosebumps. --Bill Alward, July 5, 2002

I watched this movie a second time, and there's no question it's a brilliant film. The first time I watched it, I thought there were some unrelated or unresolved threads that didn't make sense to the dream. After watching it again, I see that's not true. It's brilliantly constructed with each little piece fitting together nicely to create the overall puzzle. The other thing I noticed was Naomi Watts' tour de force performance. Hands down, she had the best actress performance of 2001. Forget about Halle Berry in Monster's Ball. Naomi's range in this film is incredible. In fact, I can't remember a better female performance in any film. --Bill Alward, July 5, 2002