Inland Empire

last updated 8 January 2015

Let me say this about David Lynch, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. 'œThere's no director I'd rather watch disappear up his own posterior.' In this baffling head trip of a movie, Laura Dern plays a fading actress cast opposite Justin Theroux's Hollywood stud in a Southern melodrama about infidelity. Pretty soon her celluloid self starts taking over her real self. As 'œthe gears of identity' gradually slip, she starts to become'”well, who or what, exactly? I, too, was 'œrecklessly confident' going into this movie, said David Edelstein in New York. 'œThree hours later, I barely knew my name, let alone what had happened.' Is Dern really a once-famous actress, or just a working-class wife whose husband 'œwants to run off with a Baltic circus'? Let's face it, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. There are 'œfew places creepier to spend time than in David Lynch's head.' Inland Empire is the evil twin of his masterpiece, Mulholland Drive. In that film, a wannabe actress gasps her last breath in a house of horrors. Here, Dern inhabits a series of abandoned houses, menacing hallways, and grubby alleys on a journey alternating between violence and intimacy. Many scenes seem gratuitously sadistic. Yet few other American filmmakers have dared 'œto peel back the surface of things' to reveal the demons lurking under the bright sunlight of Southern California. There's much black humor to be found here too, and Dern proves to be 'œa magnificent guide' through this surrealistic nightmare.

Rating: R