OxfordPress.com

Grade: A-

Verdict: It's about the journey, not the destination.

Details: Starring Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring. Directed by David Lynch. Rated R for sex, violence, nudity and language. Two hours, 26 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: I haven't a clue what David Lynch is up to in “Mulholland Drive,” but I loved every minute of it.

Lynch doesn't make his films because he wants to show us how smart or weird or artistic he is. He makes his films because that's how he makes his films. He doesn't know any other way.

Actually, “Mulholland Drive” didn't start out as a film. It was a TV pilot, but ABC took one look and ran. So Lynch rethought it, got some more financing, shot some more scenes and turned it into a motion picture. You can still see the film's roots as a series. There are at least a half-dozen characters you sense would be expanded in future episodes, which can be frustrating. Yet “Mulholland Drive” stands alone quite well. The ostensible plot has as many twists and turns as the Los Angeles street from which the movie takes its name. Think of the picture as Lynch's through-the-looking-glass look at the movie biz. Instead of “Alice in Wonderland” it's “Betty Goes Hollywood!”

Betty (Naomi Watts) is a fresh-faced kid from Ontario who's come to L.A. to be a great Hollywood actress (not just a “star,” she assures us). We meet her beaming with optimism and go-getter verve.

But remember, when people are happy in a Lynch movie, you'd best watch out. Arriving at her actress-aunt's bungalow, she discovers it's already occupied. By a mysterious amnesiac (Laura Elena Harring) who's crashed there after a car accident on Mulholland Drive. Not knowing her own name, the sultry beauty calls herself Rita, after a poster of “Gilda,” which starred Rita Hayworth. Finding out who Rita really is is one plot strand. Another is the story of Adam (Justin Theroux), a hotshot young director whose big ego runs into bigger egos when his crime-connected backers decide to take over his film. There are also the two guys who seem to be having a therapy session in Winkie's Diner. And the spooky old hag hanging out behind the Winkie's dumpster. And the Cowboy,who looks like he was embalmed on the set of a Hopalong Cassidy B-movie long ago.

“Mulholland Drive” echoes pieces of almost every film Lynch has ever made, with the exception of “The Straight Story” and possibly “The Elephant Man.” You can see “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks” and certainly “Lost Highway,” with its enigmatic meditations on the nature of identity. Somewhere in the second hour, the movie takes a U-turn that transforms it into the polar opposite of the first part's shiny-eyed Betty World. And that's about all you need to know.

The ensemble cast is excellent, from Harring and Theroux to Ann Miller as a friendly landlady (“Ten bucks says you're Betty!”) and an exotic-looking woman (unbilled) who sings — lip-syncs? — Roy Orbison's “Crying.” In Spanish. The standout is Watts, who does desperately down-and-dirty as well as she does dimpled and dewy-eyed. Her star-making scene is Betty's audition in which our ingenue let's rip with a sexy reading that sizzles.

“Mulholland Drive” will probably drive a lot of people mad with its illusions, allusions, manipulations and mysteries. But that's not what Lynch intends. He's telling us a Hollywood parable as only he can. Don't worry about where the movie's going. Just take the ride. Then write ABC and ask them to reconsider.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, (none)