Cinema Classics: Mulholland Drive

David’s Lynch’s dreamily surreal neo-noir set in the murky world of Hollywood is still a brilliant head-scratcher some seventeen years on. Naomi Watts stars as Betty, a wide-eyed ingenue who’s arrived in L.A. with big dreams of becoming a star. When she moves into her aunt’s apartment, she’s startled by a mysterious dark-haired woman who assumes the name Rita (Laura Harring) and appears to be suffering from amnesia following a fateful car accident on Mulholland Drive. What happens next is really anyone’s guess. There’s a director, a cowboy, a dumpster creature, a gangster, a key and an eerie cabaret theatre called Club Silencio. And it’s all so beautiful, particularly with a soundtrack of lovelorn ’60s pop mixed in with Angelo Badalamenti’s ominous score.