Director David Lynch ups the weird ante with this "psychological fugue." Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) is a jazz saxophonist who is married to the beautiful Renee (a brown-haired Patricia Arquette). After receiving menacing videotapes taken from inside their home, the couple begin to worry. Fred's fear is compounded when he meets .. Read more
| Starring | Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Blake |
|---|---|
| Director | David Lynch |
| Genres | Drama |
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Director David Lynch ups the weird ante with this "psychological fugue." Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) is a jazz saxophonist who is married to the beautiful Renee (a brown-haired Patricia Arquette). After receiving menacing videotapes taken from inside their home, the couple begin to worry. Fred's fear is compounded when he meets a mysterious man (Robert Blake) at a flamboyant party. Fred wakes up to discover that Renee has been murdered, and Fred is convicted of the crime. Trouble is, he doesn't remember anything from that night. Sitting in a jail cell, he undergoes a miraculous transformation, waking up as Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), a young mechanic. When Pete meets a dangerous client's sexy girlfriend, Alice Wakefield (a blonde Arquette), a passionate affair blossoms that threatens to expose Pete.
In typical Lynch fashion, he makes no effort whatsoever to explain his film or justify its bizarre occurrences, resulting in an enigmatic thriller that feels like the viewer has unknowingly walked into another person's dream. The screenplay adheres to many universal film noir conventions, but Lynch and co-screenwriter Barry Gifford's psychological angle gives them a freedom to do anything that they so desire (a concept they giddily embrace). For fans of surreal, visually arresting cinema, Lynch delivers once again.
| Starring | Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Blake, Robert Loggia, Richard Pryor, Gary Busey, Lucy Butler |
|---|---|
| Director | David Lynch |
| Studio | CINEMA CLUB |
| Run time | DVD: 2 hrs 8 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama |
| Language | DVD: English |
| Subtitles | DVD: None |
| Released | DVD: not available Production year: 1997 |
| Format | DVD |
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Four years after the Twin Peaks phenomenon, David Lynch came up with this narrative-defying psychological thriller about a jazz saxophonist in a disturbed domestic limbo (an exemplary Bill Pullman) who suddenly and inexplicably transforms into a younger man (Balthazar Getty). Though never together in a scene, the men share what appears to be the same elusive, deceptive woman (Patricia Arquette in contrasting wigs). It's not the most accessible scenario, but the delivery is hypnotising. And, while other modern films about bad people, paranoia and deceptive women get labelled film noir, Lynch reinvents the form of that genre rather than just relying on its storyline formula. Painterly, impenetrable and creepy, but never consciously hip, it's a painful, nightmarish vision of suffering and yearning that echoes Hitchcock's Vertigo, another great work that was under-appreciated in its day.
An exploration of four characters in search of each other that leaves them, and the audience, too often stranded in limbo.