Loved it Hated it

Rating: Null/10 (1 April 2002)

I have to thank Naomi Watts (who plays Betty) for giving a performance that makes this movie worthwhile. I think it would be hard, even for the coldest of you out there, not to fall in love with her display of a truly innocent people-loving woman. She fills the screen in each and every scene she's in and has left me mesmerized and enchanted like only few performances I might recall.
The film as a whole, on the other hand, is a disappointment. I think it shows that David Lynch is a very talented director wasting his talent doing David Lynch movies. It has a mix of the very best ingredients - excellent acting, great sound, very good cinematography, suspense. However, the whole is made to be much less than the sum of all these.
*** SPOILERS FROM HERE ON ***
I feel saturated by the loads of dream/reality/no-one-knows-what's-going-on type films that have been out lately. I thought Vanilla Sky was the last one I'd have to see for a while, and then came this one. I've read some of the interpretations, some of the don't-try-to-interpret, and other comments. The truth is that I came out of the movie only mildly interested in understanding what I had seen.
So Betty is probably a dream version of Dianne, that in hindsight sees herself as extremely naive for falling for Camilla. She remembers a love story in which she was real, honest, helpful, trusting, loving. Camilla came to her lost, unaware of who she was, in distress, uninvited, possibly on the run, needy, clueless, hurt. Dianne/Betty accepted her completely, believed her, protected her, and gave her all that she could. And then it was over.
Now, why turn all this into a blood bath? Why make a pain that is usually overcome the end of all that is good and humane? The movie is really scary if you take it seriously as in a way it tells you that the fact that sometimes to take a chance on love seems like risking your life, is because it is truly life-threatening. Maybe it's only there to point out how bad rejection and the loss of love can be as someone suggested. Maybe it's an attempt to portray how truly horrible it feels, and how dark and bottomless it feels to be in such pain - I don't know.
I give it a 7