In the beginning (or is it?) someone lays their head down to sleep in bed next to a woman who is tossing and turning. So, I'm guessing, the rest of the movie is a dream, although that fact never really is establisheD.... Come to think of it, nothing is really established in "Mulholland Drive." Let's just say that its just one big brilliant ball of chaos.

      This is my first Lynch film ever, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I had not even been aware that this director had such a devoted "cult" surrounding him; it seems that very few can really understand his films and quite often we tend to not like what we don't completely understand. It's a love-hate relationship between "Mulholland Drive" and the audience: if you like it, you LOVE it. If it doesn't strike a chord with you, you'll hate it passionately.

      In "Mulholland Drive," Lynch's most recent film, you can't tell the dreams from reality, nor can you tell if the story is going in chronological order. All I can tell you is that its truly one hell of a ride. I'm going to try hard to spoil this movie in the next few paragraphs and, in doing so, you will realize that spoiling this movie is impossible.

      The film twists and turns with many inter-related characters, but is centrally the story of two girls in the City of Angels: Rita and Betty. Rita (Laura Harring) is the only survivor of a car crash on the famous road above LA, Mulholland Drive. She emerges from the accident confused with a few scrapes and a million dollars in her purse together with a mysteriously distinctive key. She tumbles down the Hollywood Hills and finds refuge in an empty townhouse. In comes a naive young blonde, Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), who, after winning a jitter-bug contest, has moved to L.A. to pursue her dream to become an actress. Betty's place of abode in LA is her wealthy Aunt Ruth's townhouse, where she meets the kind landlady Coco (Ann Miller) and also finds a confused Rita in the shower, who Betty assumes is her aunt's friend.

      Eventually the truth comes out: Rita doesn't know Aunt Ruth, and she has severe amnesia from the accident. Instead of calling the police, Betty offers to help Rita find out who she really is, but all that Rita can remember is the name "Diane Selwyn" and the fact that she was going to Mulholland Drive on the night of the accident. Somehow or another, in between the lesbian affairs of Betty and Rita, who suddenly just "know" they love each other, and the amazing auditions that (the usually phony-sounding) Betty gives, there is a connection to the wheelchair-bound Mr. Roque (Michael J. Anderson) who is hellbent on making sure that Betty gets the lead role in director Adam Kesher's (Justin Theroux) newest film. This role is assured for Betty using Mr. Roque's immense Hollywood power. Soon we are greeted by Mr. Roque's "workers" who include an eerie elderly couple that Betty had met on the plane to L.A., producers of Kesher's movie, Vincenzo and Luigi Castigliane (Dan Hedaya and Angelo Badalamenti, respectively), and a man who calls himself The Cowboy (Monty Montgomery).

      There were two incredibly good scenes in this movie. One being the brief (yet hilarious) meeting between Adam Kesher and The Cowboy, and the other involving Betty and Rita in an old nightclub, where an intense lounge singer (Rebekah Del Rio) is singing her heart out in a Spanish rendition of "Cryin'" by Roy Oribison. The singer appears to drop dead on the floor...but then her voice continues to sing, bringing the girls to tears. The night show ends with a lady in blue hair calmly declaring, "Silencio." (I’m told that this a perfect example of vintage Lynch ala “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks.”)

      Betty then finds a box in the seat next to her in a theatre, and realizes that the key from Rita's purse would fit it perfectly. So the two lovers return to the townhouse and Betty unlocks the box and... Oh, wait, I forget that there should be a limit to the plot-spoilers here.

      HOWEVER this is the one movie I think can tell you the very last line without giving the whole movie away. And the grand last word uttered in this twisted tale of love is truly the only word that really fits the ending of such a movie: SILENCIO.

Margaret Child, 2002