A tale of mystery and imagination

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2002)

Well, what a stimulating surprise! David Lynch back on form with an endlessly fascinating movie that takes you by the hand and leads you down the darkest alley-ways of human trauma and psychosis, and yet, at the same time, manages to evoke an overwhelming sense of compassion and sadness.

Refreshingly too, a film that is actually filmic and which understands the grammar and language of cinema, and, (as is always the case with David Lynch), one that knows how to use the soundtrack as an artistic adjunct rather than merely as a means of carrying dialogue and playing music.

I have always yearned to see a film that captures the truly dark, downside of Hollywood and this is almost it, but how stunningly it reminds us that this City of Angels has probably broken far more hearts than it has ever made happy.
To have set it all in the 50s (that most under-rated of decades which in many ways, was far more revolutionary and potentially subversive than any subsequent ones) was a master-stroke - from the adroit, neat, sexy skill of the opening jitterbug dancers to the rag-doll parody of a Mick Jagger in less than two decades - the road map is all here; in heart-breaking Technicolor and bright Max Factor lipstick and nail varnish.