Review 743: Mulholland Drive

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive is a fascinating enigma, an alluring, engrossing neo-noir mystery that keeps you guessing until the last frame.

Blonde aspiring actress Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets the enigmatic, amnesiac brunette known only as "Rita" (Laura Harring). Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve "Rita's" identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.

The film has a hypnotic, dreamlike quality which    Lynch is clearly very inspired by Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, another film about broken dreams in Hollywood   The possibility that this is all a fantasy can be interpreted in a number of different ways: That this film is Betty/Diane dreaming of a better life for herself    Lynch cleverly and intelligently uses these Hollywood archetypes 

It's a meditation on Illusion and Identity

These characters are very clearly Hollywood archetypes: Betty is the new Hollywood hopeful, "Rita" is the femme fatal, Adam Kesher is the maverick director etc. 

Naomi Watts is a wonder in this film, she beautifully captures the wide eyed, idealistic persona of Betty Elms while also channeling the naivety that . To her, Hollywood is a Dream Place to become a movie star after she's won a Jitterbug contest back at home which supports the interpretation that what's going on is all going in "Diane's" head. She's on the up, she wants to make the most of her life. Whichever way you interpret it, Betty/Diane's downward spiral is the emotional core of the film.

Laura Harring  playing "Rita". Beautiful, mysterious &   When they first meet, Betty finds this mysterious, dazed, unnamed woman in her aunt's bathroom 

Justin Theroux is  playing film director Adam Kesher