Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern

Director: David Lynch

Screenplay: David Lynch

Running time: 2 hrs 4 mins

Genre: Drama/Thriller



CRITIQUE:

Blue Velvet is an eerie, freakish experience – and that is both a compliment and a critique. The cinema of David Lynch, after all, is inundated with oddities that pretty much go against the standard of reasons. But surprisingly, dissimilar to Mulholland Drive, which has a jumbled narrative flow, Blue Velvet has a chronological approach to storytelling. Nevertheless, it retains the dark elements that would soon serve as the bedrock for his more recent masterstroke. A tale of psychotic sexual awakening beyond the neat hedges and well-trimmed lawns of American suburbia (quite close to Hollywood), Lynch draws deeply dark strokes on his psychologically disturbing canvas, and finds terrific performances from Isabella Rossellini as the sexually repressed chanteuse and Dennis Hopper as the all-out megalomaniac. The film’s weight, however, lies on the shoulders of the clean-cut Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey, the young college student hopping around in pseudo-detective work, whilst maintaining an off-kilter romance with Laura Dern.


Lynch’s visual palette is so heavy with dark hues that it looks a noir. In fact, there are noirish elements everywhere in this film; a baffled, ambiguous hero, a morally subversive villain, and a cerebral femme fatale. Whilst a very flawed film, and certainly cannot compare to the brilliance of Mulholland Drive, this is still a significant Lynch celluloid. How it influenced Donnie Darko’s dark heart is a thing to marvel at. Even Lynch’s almost obsessive criticism to Hollywood life starts from here, as he continues to rework the theme in his future films. The main stumble here is a rather tidy ending, so contradictory to the entire grim affair.


VERDICT:

An eclectic mix of noir, detective fiction, a bit of Hitchcock, and a dash of the bizarre; not Lynch’s best but watchable and disquieting.



RATING: B+