Starring: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Anne Miller
Director: David Lynch
Rated: MA15+
AS the director of Elephant Man, Dune and Twin Peaks David Lynch is a master film-maker.
Other films like Blue Velvet and Eraserhead indicate his interests to be bleak and dark. Mulholland Drive is his bleakest portrayal of humanity yet.
Rita (Laura Harring) is in a car accident and gets amnesia. Betty (Naomi Watts) has just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie actor. She moves into her aunt’s apartment and discovers Rita (not her real name) held up there.
Betty sets out to help Rita discover who she really is. That’s as good an explanation of the plot as I can give. After this you are on your own and so is the film! Nothing and no one is as he or she appears.
There is repressed sexuality, abjection, black humour, irony and parody everywhere in this film.
Mulholland Drive is an appallingly immoral view of humanity which most viewers would find very distasteful.
There is one bright spot in this film. By the end of Mulholland Drive Australian actor Naomi Watts has played three, or is it four, characters? Her scenes demonstrate a dramatic range that has ‘star’ written all over them.
