Interested in content, see it thrice!

Rating: 8/10 (24 September 2002)

On first view, Mulholland Drive is enigmatic. But on second view about all riddles are solved, and on third view only brilliant superficiality remains. Besides Naomi Watts' acting, it is this steep learning curve that I enjoyed most when viewing it. Anyway, here is my solution to this apparent labyrinth, after having found values for all relevant parameters in the movie's final thirty minutes.
*
In her youth, Diane Selwyn (Deep River, Ontario; Canada) has won a dancing contest, which makes her decide to start acting. She has the ambition to conquer Hollywood. When her aunt dies, who lived in Los Angeles working for the movies, she inherits some money and moves to L.A. herself. In L.A. Diane discovers that her acting talents are less impressive than her natural beauties. During the audition of 'Sylvia North Story' the director Bob Rooker makes it clear that she has no talent. This in contrast to Camilla Rhodes, who is selected to be the lead actress.
Diane and Camilla become friends, even lovers, and thanks to Camilla Diana will play some minor parts. For Diane Camilla is the love of her life, Diane is just one of Camilla's affairs. If after a while Camilla ends their relationship, Diane knows why: Camilla is getting serious with the director Adam Kesher. Once abandoned, Diane stays in her apartment to sob and masturbate. But then Camilla invites Diane to Adam's house at Mulholland Drive. Here Diane finds nothing but deep humiliation. In this environ her lack of success is more than apparent, the marriage of Adam and Camilla is announced, she notices that Camilla still has other female lovers. Diane rushes home in tears.
Somewhat later Diane decides to hire a man to kill Camilla. 'This is the girl,' she tells him, showing Camilla's photograph. The deal is made at Winkie's, Sunset Blvd. She hands over the money, and when the deed is done she will receive a blue key. After having received the key, Diane hides at home in deep despair. She tries to sleep and forget it all, but instead she dreams up the twisted soap-paradise that forms much of the movies first 110 (!) minutes. (Dreaming is marked more by an audible than a visual clue: the monotonous dark sounds.)
Diane's dream uses elements from the most depressing time of her life; Winkie's, 'This is the girl.', blue key, among other things. But despite signs of danger and dead, all is as she wanted it to be. Just arrived in Hollywood, under the name of 'Betty Elms', she promises to become a successful actress, as even Bob Rooker has to acknowledge. Camilla suffers from loss of memory caused by a car-accident that she survived. She finds shelter in the apartment of Betty's aunt, where Betty is also going to stay. Camilla now calls herself Rita, after a film poster reading: There never was a woman like [] Rita Hayworth'. Although starting a new career, Betty still finds time to help Rita trying to overcome her amnesia, a fate she shares with all dead people. It makes Rita highly dependent on Betty, especially in their fruitless search for Rita's true identity. Is she Diane Selwyn? When Betty and Rita find Diane dead in her apartment, Rita decides to adopt a new identity, very similar to Betty's. That night Betty and Rita undouble in bed and, even in appearance, in the mysterious club Silencio.
In reality, Diane has not been seen for three weeks when an old friend (a once lover left for Camilla) visits her to collect some of her belongings. She tells Diane that two detectives have been at her door. As soon as the woman has left, Diane resumes brooding over the blue key. Then, she hears knocking at her door These harsh knocks push Diane over her limit. Surrounded by distorted images of her youth and later, she runs to her sleeping room and kills herself. Over her bed there is the same cloudy smoke as over the car-accident that killed Camilla.
Silencio...
*
It's a stroke of genius to show the wrecked life of a girl striving for fame in moviedom as a distracted chromium plated dream. But the chromium used here can not allude to the dark, even the blackest tones shine. As a consequence, a powerful idea tends to reduce to a cryptogrammatical postmodern twist, a mannerism to sell true human misery in Hollywood. Mulholland Drive may well continue to impress those who strongly believe in form, but as far as I am concerned: Hail, Kieslowsky! Hail, Mendes! Hail, Interiors!
Mulholland Drive is dedicated to Jennifer Syme (1972--2001).