MULHOLLAND DRIVE (David Lynch, 2001) **1/2 SPOILER

Rating: Null/10 (17 October 2004)

I had failed to watch this at the cinema when it was first released here, so I had to wait till it turned up on local TV. Once again, a much-touted David Lynch offering ends up doing very little for mebut, at least, Angelo Badalamenti's score was good!
First of all, what's with that horrid opening? I was just about to give up on it when the plot got on its wayand, in any case, I was genuinely anxious to find out what all the fuss was about. In the end, it was Naomi Watts who made the film for me: baring her soul in a multi-layered (and highly emotional) performance; she is particularly effective during her sexy audition sequence.
I do feel that MULHOLLAND DRIVE is a vast improvement on the director's LOST HIGHWAY (1997) but, for me, David Lynch's films provide a puzzle that is simply not worth unraveling (after taking an eternity to get there)! Suffice to say that the only wholly satisfying film of his I've seen is his one 'mainstream' venture  THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980) Despite Lynch's would-be surrealistic touches, he does not have Roman Polanski's eye for capturing the reality of the human condition in such abnormal circumstances. Consequently, his films end up being pretentious and self-indulgent bores!
Back to the film in question; some of the detail IS amusing  Ann Miller's presence (God knows what she was thinking!); the robbery-gone-wrong sequence; the bigwigs' intimidation of the young director at various stages of the film's first half; the scene at the café (with another baffling and completely irrelevant anecdote involving some sort of a monster!)  but, for the life of me, it all seems to be jumbled together without any apparent rhyme or reasonwhich goes a long way in explaining my frustration with Lynch's work as a whole! On the other hand, the brief erotic scenes between the two women are sensitively handled and do not go overboard (unlike the tasteless and over-sexed LOST HIGHWAY).
The twist ending, again, is not so shocking as Lynch probably intended: for one thing, far too many recent films have presented us characters facing an identity crisis or otherwise lost in some 'alternate' reality. In this case, when the whole mystery transpires to be a lesbian's suicide in desperation over being jilted by her Hollywood-star girlfriend, really all I could say was 'SO FU**ING WHAT?!'