Mulholland Dr.

One thing that I want to see from LGBTQ* representation in media is movies that features unavoidably queer protagonists but in a story that doesn’t focus entirely on them being queer. If that’s something you want too, Mulholland Dr. has an unavoidably queer protagonists but that’s probably the most normal and even boring thing in the movie. Because wow, what the hell, David Lynch?

Given the format of my reviews I guess this means I have to give a plot summary of Mulholland Dr. now. Shit, okay. Mulholland Dr. stars Naomi Watts as Betty, a bright-eyed young actress who moves to L.A. to pursue her dream. Staying in her Aunt’s apartment, Betty encounters an amnesiac woman who was a survivor of a car crash. The woman names herself Rita and the two women form a fast bond. Betty and Rita find out Rita’s identity and what happened to her. Meanwhile, director Adam Kesher is getting threatened by a weird, shadowy Hollywood organization. They want him to cast an actress named Camilla Rhodes in his movie which he is defiant against.

That’s the gist of how the movie starts, at least. I was tempted to have this next sentence be, “and then things get weird” but things in Mulholland Dr. are weird from the get-go. A lot of very odd stuff happens in this movie and it’s hard to make sense of it let alone summarize. Even if I did a beat-by-beat description of this movie, it probably wouldn’t be helpful and wouldn’t sound nearly as good in writing as it is to watch it.

David Lynch has a way of creating images and stories that stay with you after the movie is finished. He’s very adept at tapping into the subconscious. Lynch’s films have a genuine dream or nightmare-like quality to them which lots of directors can only hope to achieve.

What I love about David Lynch’s work compared to other films in the surrealist genre is that I feel like if you asked a lot of surrealist filmmakers why that weird shit happened in their movie, the reason would be that it’s a surrealist film and that’s how they do. At best, maybe it fits into the theme of the story. A lot of surrealist films I see are excuses to be narratively lazy by not needing things to make sense.

That’s not what David Lynch’s work feels like. With Lynch, I fully believe he understands exactly what’s going on in his films and could explain a very thorough reason for any of the weird things he puts in his movies, he just doesn’t want to. Mulholland Drive feels like Lynch has given you a puzzle with only half the pieces. He knows the full picture but will only give you fragments. It’s aggravating but also completely fascinating and engaging.

The queer element of this film is far from the most important part of this film but also unavoidably present. In both versions of reality Mulholland Dr. presents, Betty and Rita (or Diane and Camilla) have some sort of relationship. Though again, given the general weirdness of their overall lives, any discussion of their actual sexual identities never really comes up.

The fact that these characters are queer gets significant screen time but is fairly insignificant to the overall story because of course it is! There’s so much weirder shit going on that two ladies kissing. There’s a frankness to the sexuality in this movie combined with the weirdness of everything else that really works for me. The queer elements are unavoidably part of the narrative, but hardly worth remarking upon in the face of everything else. I think this approach to queer characters normalizes sexuality.

Mulholland Dr. appears on a lot of lists of queer or WLW-themed movies which it technically is but calling this a lesbian movie doesn’t capture this movie at all. This movie is a whole lotta things. Mulholland Dr. is like no other WLW movie. It’s like no other movie. I adore it as a WLW movie for having lesbianism being avoidably part of the movie but also on the back burner to a strange, engaging, sometimes scary, unforgettable larger story. David Lynch is definitely not human but he has certainly mastered the human art form of film making. Mulholland Dr. is must-watch for any WLW out there who use the word film instead of movie.

Overall rating: 9.5/10

Other WLW films in similar genres