Inland Empire

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

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