Mulholland Drive in reverse. Love, sex jealousy and rage once again are the primary forces at play here. The unconscious mind desperately tries to filter and re-evaluate reality. Impotence is eliminated, desire is amplified, and the whole world is in the palm of your hand. Then…then…the cold, ugly truth encroaches on the fantasy.
Lynch’s L.A. trilogy of Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire are incredibly tense and terrifying thrillers that truly feel like something otherworldly.
Another terrific Billy Wilder production. The plot twists in here are insane and genuinely upsetting. Deception is piled on deception until your head spins. Nobody is who they say they are, and it’s such a thrilling experience to unravel the mystery. I’d be interested to know what Hitchcock thought of it.
“We have a theory that crime enhances one’s beauty.”
“Beauty and crime, we feel them to be one.”
Even from what little I’ve seen from John Waters, I can safely say he makes some of the best satires out there. Everything from the dialogue to the performances are cranked up to 11 not just to shock us, but also to expose a hideous truth somewhere deep down in society. Female Trouble specifically deals with the obsessive desire for fame and…
Even better than I remembered. 10 years ago this was the film that had me hooked on David Lynch. Dreamlike, mysterious, and oozing with style and atmosphere. The surreal bleeds into the real. A romance is doomed. A Hollywood dream is shattered. An overpowering jealousy is taking over. How does the unconscious mind deal with it? What will the conscious mind do?
It’s always hard for me to choose my all time favorite film but this might be it.
This movie gets more and more disturbing every time I watch it. The strange side of suburbia that is masked by the normal, the deviant, psychotic behaviors on display, and Lynch’s sound design, editing and visuals all come together to form a dreamscape experience. Blue Velvet’s perspective is something most of us aren’t ever involved with. It’s out of sight, out of mind. And I hope to never, ever experience anything like it.
This time I also really appreciated all of the nods to Alfred Hitchcock.
