Good film, but I've got some complaints

Rating: Null/10 (18 July 2002)

A movie in puzzle form is fine, and honestly, more than metaphorically Mulholland Drive pulls it off. It took me about one viewing of it to put together a rudimentary solution. There still are a few scenes I can barely make out the necessity for in any case. As a writer, I love to be able to scrap up rough drafts of dreams. Dreams themselves have such vivid yet blurred imagery, we can literally take what we want from them. I assume this was Lynch's intention. By overemphasizing imagery, acting, music he attempts to recreate the manic depressiveness of Diane Selwyn's mind. I say this because I hope this is what he's done. The first kiss between "Betty" and "Rita" features this cheesily overdone entrance of strings. I remember commenting to my friend at the time, "Do you think an accordion would have worked in this scene?" What I'm extrapolating from this is Diane's delusions about the power of her romance with Camilla. However I might remind Lynch of the old writer's reminder. "Tell a dream. Lose a reader." In this case it would be audience. This film is spectacularly done, but it is not for the casual viewer. The worst part of this film was how annoying the two initial main characters are, "Betty" and "Rita." And they were the MAIN characters...I wasn't quite sure how I was going to sit through this 2 and a half hour movie (I've sat through five hour ones with no problem before.) Betty was so bubbly and innocent I wanted to smack her. As for Laura Harring's "Rita"...after two minutes of seeing her meaningless facial expressions and open mouth stares, I wanted to beat her over the head with a baseball bat. In fact I was hoping maybe somebody would decapitate her in the first half hour of the movie. No such luck. Aside from that they just don't work as a gay couple. No, I'm not pushing butch dyke stereotypes here. What I'm saying is that the chemistry is unbelievable. Either Diane's forgotten what got them that first spark or I missed why exactly they decided to kiss other than the fact that "Rita" gets into bed with "Betty" without any clothes on. Boo. No, no...rather... Silencio.