What Mulholland Drive reminds me of is the "antistory" that I studied back in High School- a story that had no logic, no structure, sometimes no plot or character. These antistories demanded that the reader draw his/her own interpretation as to what the author was trying to say. Mulholland Drive does exactly this. The opening credits start with people doing the Charleston against a purple bluescreen. We then fade into a woman(Laura Elena Harring) who is in a limo, dressed up like a movie star. The limo is heading on Mulholland Drive in Hollywood. When the limo driver pulls over to lead the woman out at gunpoint, two teens speed up the road, one car crashes into the limo in a disfiguring accident. When the smoke clears from the crash, the woman is shown in a daze, escaping the wreckage and heading to the hills below. She ends up sneaking into the apartment of a famous movie star (Maya Bond). The woman is amnesiac and assumes the name "Rita" after seeing a poster for a Rita Haywood movie on the wall in the bathroom.

We are introduced to Betty (Naomi Watts), the niece of the apartment's owner. Betty hopes to follow in her aunt's footsteps and is housesitting the apartment in her aunt's leave of absence. At the same time, she is hoping to get a part in a big Hollywood movie. She is the archetypal naive Hollywood outsider from Deep River, Ontario, struggling to make it big in the movie business. She doesn't want to be a "big movie star, but just to be an actress would be fine." She finds Rita in the bathroom of the apartment and from there tries to help the struggling Rita remember her own identity. Bits and pieces of a puzzle start to come together as Rita remembers something- a name tag at a restaurant is of a name she once knew. The plot thickens and we are drawn deeper and deeper into this psychological web of mystery. Lynch, who also wrote the script, makes it hard to discern just what conclusions we are supposed to draw. While Betty has set out to help a complete stranger, she also tries to focus on her career. In one of the movie's many side plots, she auditions for the part in a movie. Watts does this audition so convincingly that if the casting crew in the film didn't offer her a role, I would have written to Lynch myself.

It is these multiple side plots that make Mulholland Drive so intricate, that a main plot goes almost nowhere forwards. One of the key side plots is that of a director, Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), who is told by some evil men that he must hire a girl, Camilla Rhodes to take a much-desired role in Kesher's movie. These men are controlled by a small man (Michael J. Anderson) in a wheelchair in a glass encased room. Lynch's camera work and lighting here is so phenomenal that you feel like you want to wake up from the nightmare. But it continues. It continues to the point where the pent-up bond between the amnesiac and the actress becomes so high-strung, that it releases in a complexly simple sex scene between the two. And it was after this scene were I lost all track of the movie. The movie then takes all kinds of twists and turns, leaving the viewer nowhere to go and no way out. To spoil an ending would prove rather difficult because there is no real ending. Nothing is resolved and any semblance of storyline is dissolved.

I cannot say enough about this movie. Mulholland Drive is by far one of the finest films I think I've seen. It's darkness is different from that of David Fincher, it's concept makes Memento seem like child's play. The scoring adds an immense amount to the movie, making it dark where it needs to be and lightening up at parts. Lynch is also listed in having writing credits to the music as well. Peter Deming's cinematography was great, matching the mood and creating the perfect landscape for the characters, who make the movie. Lynch was nominated at the Oscars for best director, but I think much of the credit is deserved by Watts and Harring (what can I say, I'm also a sucker for dark brown hair and brown eyes), who turn in stunning performances throughout the movie and convince us that this movie is truly a bad dream. And while I can't stop talking about it, it's giving me the creeps.

Silencio.