Mulholland Drive
David Lynch, USA, France, 2001o
Aspiring actress Betty has just moved to Los Angeles and can stay in her aunt's flat for the time being. There she unexpectedly meets a mysterious beauty who, after a car accident in the Hollywood hills, remembers nothing, not even her own name. The stranger finds tens of thousands of dollars in her handbag and believes herself threatened. The two women set out to find the identity of the memoryless one, and grow closer in the process. At the same time, they get caught up in a whirlpool of strange events that gradually pulls them off the ground of reality.
David Lynch is the director of the uncanny. Since his first film Eraserhead (1977), his characters have been constantly threatened by violence and death. For Lynch, however, the most unholy phenomenon of all - and the greatest fascination - is the human psyche. Lynch's films therefore have the logic of dreams; more than any physical violence, madness looms in them. Mulholland Drive belongs in the ranks of Lynch's masterpieces, along with Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and Lost Highway. With a suggestiveness second to none, the filmmaker here tells the story of a hopeful young actress who meets a mysterious beauty with memory loss in the Hollywood hills. The more intrepidly the two women seek to solve the mystery behind this story, and the closer they become in the process, the more the ground of reality eludes them. Lynch and his crew stage this border crossing with some narrative cabinet pieces and a stupendous sense of atmosphere. Like all the greats of the seventh art, Lynch needs seemingly little on the outside to override everyday perceptions: ambiguous dialogue, an outstanding lead actress (Naomi Watts), ironclad consistency in the choice of sets and colors, Angelo Badalamenti's insane score, finally the fantastic images of Twin Peaks cinematographer Peter Deming ... In other words, it takes a lot for something like this.
Andreas Furler