ICA Cinematheque: Mulholland Dr.

Starting life as a rejected pilot episode, one that utterly confounded the executives at ABC, additional funding and significant re-shoots enabled this aborted television series to metamorphosise into the feature-length Mulholland Dr. (2001) - arguably Hollywood surrealist David Lynch's most accomplished, acclaimed and emotionally resonant work to date.

Naomi Watts stars as Betty Elms, a naive young Jitterbug-contest winner who travels from Deep River, Ontario to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming a celebrated film star. But when Betty finds a mysterious dark-haired woman hiding out in her aunt's apartment, suffering from amnesia and seemingly connected to the criminal underworld, she finds herself entangled in a plot straight out of a Hollywood thriller.

With overt references to Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, and influences ranging from Alfred Hitchcock to Maya Deren, Lynch's noir-infused tale transcends its genre tropes with a seismic narrative shift, revealing itself to be a tragic, complex exploration of fantasy construction, romantic loss and the lengths we will go to preserve the illusion of our failed dreams.

On the Blog, read Film & Cinema Co-ordinator James King's analysis of the film and its relation to the season Consider the Fugue →