CINÉ LUMIÈRE
17 Queensberry Place
London SW7 2DT
An exploration of the role of costumes in David Lynch’s enigmatic masterpiece, Mulholland Drive, where characters inhabit a complex and surreal world with different levels of reality and shifting identities.
The film will be preceded by an illustrated introduction by Fashion & Cinema’s Joana Granero
MULHOLLAND DRIVE
dir: David Lynch
with Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Robert Forster
US | 2001 | col | 147 min
As the film opens with a car wreck in Mulholland Drive, involving a man pointing a woman with a gun and a group of drunk revelers, a labyrinthine story of love, death, and despair unfolds in the most mesmerising and surrealist way. The woman, sole survivor to the wreck, is left with amnesia and stumbles into the apartment where Betty, an aspirin actress, is supposed to use.
Together, they embark on a journey to uncover the amnesiac’s identity. From there, the film spirals into a hypnotic descent of broken hearts, crushed dreams, and ruthless Hollywood executives, revealing alternative identities of these two women. The dreamlike and the inexplicable merge with horror and beauty, blurring the lines between reality and illusion.
David Lynch fully understood the power of costumes, and here they are used to define each character in strikingly unique ways and defining their shifting identities and emotional states: Naomi Watts’s Betty and Diane, as well as Laura Harring’s Rita and Camilla.
The film’s costumes were conceived by Amy Stofsky, with whom Lynch had already worked on Wild at Heart, where Nicolas Cage wears that unforgettable, show-stealing python blazer.
The film will be introduced by Fashion & Cinema’s Joana Granero.
