GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW

"This is the girl." Like "Now it's dark" in Blue Velvet or "Fire walk with me" in the film version of Twin Peaks, "This is the girl" forms a sort of mantra in Mulholland Drive, writer-director David Lynch's latest film. Uttered first by a dyspeptic mobster who's very particular about his espresso, later by a menacingly polite cowboy who looks as if he just stepped out of an establishing shot from a Republic Pictures B western, and finally by an obdurate hotshot film director who's eventually persuaded that only by saying those words can he get back the life that has been abruptly taken from him, it's an initially neutral-sounding phrase that gains more currency every time it comes up. What it really "means" — what this whole, wholly astonishing film really "means" — will no doubt be a source of unending, fascinated speculation among Lynch cultists, as well as a provocation of genuine, foam-at-the-mouth frustration among those who got suckered into buying their tickets after hearing that the film contains a couple of really hot lesbian love scenes.

Not that it doesn't, mind you — and it's also worth noting that those scenes are rarities in the Lynch oeuvre, in that they don't represent the act of physical love with complete revulsion. Indeed, the affair between amnesiac vamp Rita (Laura Elena Harring) — who, not remembering who she is, has cribbed her name from a poster of the movie Gilda — and perky Hollywood newbie Betty (Naomi Watts) is possibly the healthiest, most positive amorous relationship ever depicted in a Lynch movie — that is, for the duration of its healthy stage, which lasts about two minutes. The movie, which began as a pilot for a proposed television series and was reworked by Lynch into a stand-alone film after French producers stepped in with financing for new scenes, is a typically Lynchian sprawl (well over two hours), packed with bizarre characters, twisting plot lines, and unforgettable set pieces, with Rita and Betty's story serving as its linchpin, so to speak. Although set in present-day L.A., the movie has the same unstuck-in-time feel that gave the great Blue Velvet much of its uncanny atmosphere.