The key to understanding the story line

Rating: 10/10 (2 September 2013)

A film often seen as surrealistic and entirely incomprehensible, I am to provide the course of events of the plot line here, as they must be in chronological order.
You have to see it like this: The moment when Camille puts the blue key into the blue box is the moment when finally not only her consciousness comes back. She remembers who she is and what her life was, and what happened just before the accident. This is when the movie shows the spectator how things came to the point where they are now.
(The fact that Betty disappears just before Camille puts the blue key to the key hole of the blue box fits perfectly into the metaphor – Betty helped Camille unto now to try to regain some memory, but of course, one can only regain one's own memory by oneself.) The second part of the film, after the blue triangle key opening the blue box, tells what happened before the accident, it is as simple as that.
But no wonder the film is so confusing. The whole story is related through the eyes of a woman who lost all her memory, and is regaining it piece by piece.
The story is not that complicated, and is really very clear in the film: Two actresses, Diane and Camille, have a relationship. When Camille has an affair and ends up marrying the director of a film she is in and ends the first relationship, jealous Diane hires a professional killer to get her ex-lover killed. However, because of a freak accident at the moment that Camille should be killed, she survives. Having received head trauma, she walks back into the city. There, she finds refuge in an empty apartment, in which she hides until discovered by the new inhabitant, a young woman from out of town coming to stay for a short while in the apartment, while the owner is on holiday. This young woman, also an aspiring actress, and whose name is Betty, will help Camille try to find back her memory. After two nights, the two become lovers.
In the meantime, Camille's ex-lover Diane received the agreed on sign to say that the murder has been executed - even though it has not: in the beginning passages of the film already we saw that the killer she hired was a bungler, so he delivered the key before being sure of having the mission accomplished.
Diane commits suicide because of the guilt.
Camille and Betty discovering Diane, Camille's ex-lover's body in her apartment, while Camille has not regained memory yet, she only knows that girl, Diane, is someone she used to know.
However, she will recover her memory during the following night.
I identified only one single passage as a dream passage – the part when the house-swap neighbour comes, and Diane is seemingly resurrected. I also have some loose ends – the guy and the face at Winkie's, and the "cowboy". One day I will probably watch the film again with these two loose ends in mind.
By the way, the fact that the first thing that Camille remembers is her ex-girlfriend's name, and that she even thinks that might be herself means that the two women must have had a strong and significant relationship. Also the fact that her ex-girlfriend is ready to kill Camille for leaving her attests to this.
I wrote longer and in more detail about this on my personal blog http://traschy.blogspot.nl/2013/09/mulholland-drive.html