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Review

Lynch has made a career of exploring the dark side of Americana, and what could be more American than the Hollywood dream? Wide-eyed Betty (Watts), a naïve, aspiring actress (aren't they all?), gets off the plane at LAX and into her apartment, only to find "Rita" (Harring) hiding there, an amnesiac fatale with a purse full of money. They bond and, like Rivette's Celine and Julie, try to unravel a mystery to which they hold only a tenuous connection. Or something like that. With its genesis as a TV pilot (which ABC rightly figured the masses were not ready for), there are enough characters and plot threads for several seasons. Lynch expanded the pilot to include generous helpings of sex and violence (with a particularly hot scene between the two leads), and a whopper of an ending that turns everything inside-out and, incidentally, makes no sense at all. But you know that going in: this is Lynch's hypnotic and darkly beautiful dream world, full of monsters, desires and fantasies that no one in the real America could touch. Scene follows colorful scene, mixing high emotion and quirky humor masterfully, unlike the herky jerky attempts of Lost Highway. Mulholland Drive is Lynch in full REM state, America as imagined by Eraserhead's lady in the radiator.

 -- David Gorgos