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Review - Mullholland Drive (continued)
Although Lynch twists the plot in the middle section of the movie, the start and finish are more logical, and so more easily explained. Betty may have passed her screen test with flying colours, but when she is about to be introduced by the casting agent to Adam Kesher the director, she remembers she is supposed to be meeting her friend Rita, and flees the set, completely losing her opportunity. She may have to settle for bit parts on Camilla Rhodes movies instead.
When Rita looks into the blue box in Diane Selwyn's apartment, her memory comes back, and her spiteful personality with it. Their friendship had grown to include sexual relations, but Betty has fallen so completely in love with Rita that she can no longer function on her own, yet is now treated increasingly cruelly. When Camilla sends a limo to her apartment, the hot new talent that was Betty no longer exists. She is Diane Selwyn, just another failed actress in Hollywood. Persuaded to go along, she is ritually humiliated by Camilla, firstly with her new fiance Adam Kesher, and then when she kisses a girl, also played by Melissa George.
Enraged by jealousy Diane hires the same hitman (Mark Pellegrino) to kill Camilla. When the deed is done, he will deliver a blue key to Diane. Later, alone in her apartment, Diane finds the blue key, and distraught at what has occurred, she commits suicide by shooting herself in the face.
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The middle section of the film does see Betty and an amnesiac Rita discovering Diane Selwyn's body and so it becomes clear that a jealous Diane Selwyn hired the hitman to kill Rita. On Mullholland Drive Rita narrowly escapes when the joyriders hit the limo, and from there she meets Betty, and later they discover Diane Selwyn's body and Rita remembers that she is Camilla Rhodes, which is the final scene from a linear perspective.
As for Lynch, Mullholland Drive is further evidence of his genius at delivering a complex and intriguing package for modern audiences to enjoy, after the success of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. He is never afraid to ask the audience to invest in what they are witnessing, and is always happy to use complexity to twist the simplest of plots.
One consistently eluding factor of Mullholland Drive is the exact meaning of the scenes in the club known as Silencio. The amnesiac Rita remembers the name of the club and drags Betty there late one evening, where two artists deliver the message that you can't always believe what you see, or hear, including a soulful singer whose voice continues after she collapses on stage and has to be dragged off by the stagehands. It is while they are at the club that Betty discovers a blue box in her purse, that matches Rita's key. When Betty opens the box back at the department, she disappears into it. Rita cannot find her, and she is not seen again. Consequently, the Cowboy re-appears and tells the dead Diane Selwyn, that its 'time to wake up, pretty lady'.
It seems Betty and Diane Selwyn cannot co-exist, either in Camilla's affections, or indeed our own. Mullholland Drive does however. It is an entertaining and daring piece of film-making by a unique auteur that deservedly lead to an Oscar nomination for Best Director, and further nominations for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay awards at the 2001 Golden Globes. It won the Best Picture award from the New York Film Critics Circle, and enabled Lynch to share the Best Director award (with Joel Coen) at the 2001 Cannes film festival.
10/10 Seductive Noir Complexity