Mulholland Drive review

Anyone who has the same lunch of a tuna sandwich every day is liable to be a little strange, though David Lynch has provided many more extreme examples of his warped personality. The latest, Mulholland Dr, is another journey into a surreal world inhabited by the director's typical array of freaks, sociopaths and dysfunctional dreamers. What little sense it makes is probably still percolating inside Lynch's disturbed mind as it certainly never reaches the screen. But because of that and not despite it, Mulholland Dr proves an enthralling and stimulating trip.

Originally conceived as a TV series for ABC, the network ultimately passed on the project leading Lynch to take his idea and licked wounds and rework it for the big screen. It would be intriguing to know what the executives thought they were going to get from Lynch. Pitching Mulholland Dr would be like describing fog to a blind person. Some characters reappear as different characters, others appear fleetingly, their roles unclear while all have tenuous links with each other and reality. Naomi Watts, who plays the saccharine sweet Betty as well as the strung out Diane suggests, "I think that's what David tries to capture about Mulholland Drive. It's a road that leads everywhere but nowhere at the same time."

The film opens with a violent car accident on Mulholland Drive, a winding road which straddles the hills between seedy Hollywood and the sanitised suburbia of the valley. A dazed and dazzling girl (Laura Elena Harring) staggers away from the wreckage with a bag full of money and no recollection of who or where she is. She hides out in an apartment until discovered by Betty, a paragon of prim naivety who's just arrived in LA with wide eyes, a big smile and dreams of becoming a star. Hastily taking the name Rita from a Gilda poster hanging in Betty's aunt's apartment, the two girls go in search of her true identity.

With Lynch's reluctance to adhere to anything resembling a conventional narrative, the story shifts to an archetypal black clad movie director, Adam (Justin Theroux) who's being pressured into casting a particular girl in his movie. If there's any kind of unifying theme to Mulholland Dr it's enmeshed in Lynch's contempt for the unscrupulous movie industry. It parallels the distorted reality of movies with the distorted reality of those who work in them and in so doing creates a world that floats vaguely between recognition and fantasy.

To question is fruitless. The only reasonable way to approach Lynch's work is with acceptance. Not blind, but with eyes fully open to possibilities. When both Betty and Rita reappear as different characters, it could be meant to reflect the different sides of their personalities or it could simply be a ploy to undermine our assumptions. Whatever the motives, the random composition is a constant surprise and a welcome relief from the stifling predictability that burdens most films.

The margin of error between success and failure with Lynch is narrow, a point exemplified by the incoherent Lost Highway, but with Mulholland Dr he has again found his form and produced a work of enigmatic style and wit.