Mulholland Drive

The films of David Lynch (born in 1946) touch upon the mysteries of how human thought works. With Mulholland Drive, the filmmaker wanted to make a televised series, as he did with Twin Peaks. Is it the dimension of this project or its strangeness which put off the American chain ABC? In the end it was Pierre Edelman and StudioCanal which would produce the film.

Betty (Naomi Watts), a young actress, blonde, diaphanous, awe-struck, lands in Hollywood. Rita (Laura E. Harring), a magnificent dishy brunette, has amnesia after an accident in Mulholland Drive, the road bordering the houses of stars. The two women become friends and go looking for Rita's identity. Their only clues: the word "silencio", a strange blue key and a name, "Diane Selwyn". The closeness of these two young women intensifies. From friends they become lovers until soon one becomes confused with the other: with a wig the brunette becomes blonde. Who is Betty, who is Rita? Then a box appears which is opened with the mysterious key. At that moment, the film changes. Betty is no longer that sweet and attentive young woman, but Diane, a failed actress, emerging from a long sleep during which she dreamt this entire first part of the film. Rita is no longer that lost woman, but Camilla, a Hollywood star, the one Diane would have liked to become.

This diptych oscillates between duality and duplicity. Everything here is double-faceted: the reality of the second part and the mirror images of the dream. The brunette Camilla-Rita is the phantasm of the blonde Betty-Diane, a rival her unconscious has transformed into a lover.

With Mulholland Drive, Lynch created a film about the spellbinding hold of Hollywood, just as Wilder (he cites Sunset Boulevard), Minnelli or Donen and Kelly had done before him. But it is above all Hitchcock and Godard he is closest to: the quest for identity and the fascination with a deadly figure as in Vertigo; the duality of Brigitte Bardot (Camille), both blonde and brunette in Le Mépris (Contempt).