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Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya ... see more see more... , Mark Pellegrino , Robert Forster , Katharine Towne , Lee Grant , Michael J. Anderson , Diane Baker , Scott Coffey , Billy Ray Cyrus , Chad Everett , Matt Gallini , Melissa George , Marcus Graham , Sean E. Markland , Monty Montgomery , James Karen , Brian Beacock , Missy Crider , Brent Briscoe

David Lynch wrote and directed this look at two women who find themselves walking a fine line between truth and deception in the beautiful but dangerous netherworld of Hollywood. A beautiful woman (La... read more read more...ura Elena Harring) riding in a limousine along Los Angeles' Mulholland Drive is targeted by a would-be shooter, but before he can pull the trigger, she is injured when her limo is hit by another car. The woman stumbles from the wreck with a head wound, and in time makes her way into an apartment with no idea of where or who she is. As it turns out, the apartment is home to an elderly woman who is out of town, and is allowing her niece Betty (Naomi Watts) to stay there; Betty is a small-town girl from Canada who wants to be an actress, and her aunt was able to arrange an audition with a film director for her. Betty befriends the injured woman, who begins calling herself "Rita" after seeing a poster of Rita Hayworth. While Betty's audition impresses a casting agent, and she catches the eye of hotshot director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), Kesher's producers and moneymen insist with no small vehemence that he instead cast a woman named Camilla Rhodes. As Rita attempts to put the pieces of her life back together, she pulls the name Diane Selwyn from her memory; Rita thinks it could be her real name, but when she and Betty find a listing for Diane Selwyn and visit her apartment, they discover the latest victim of a mysterious killer who is eluding police detective Harry McKnight (Robert Forster). Rita's emotional identity soon takes a left turn, and it turns out that neither woman is quite who she once appeared to be. David Lynch originally conceived Mulholland Drive as the pilot film for a television series; after the ABC television network rejected the pilot and declined to air it, the French production film StudioCanal took over the project, and Lynch reshot and re-edited the material into a theatrical feature. The resulting version of Mulholland Drive premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where David Lynch shared Best Director honors with Joel Coen. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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88% liked it

159,474 ratings

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81% liked it

153 critics

R, 2 hr. 27 min.

Directed by: David Lynch

Release Date: October 8, 2001

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DVD Release Date: April 9, 2002

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Stats: 11,845 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (11,845)

  • garyX
    January 10, 2013
    garyX
    An aspiring, fresh-faced young actress new in Hollywood discovers a woman in her appartment who is suffering from amnesia and they attempt to discover who she is using only a few slender clues. David Lynch once again delights and exasperates with this beautiful and always intrigu... read moreing modern noir. It does not surprise me to discover that this was originally intended to be a TV show, as it reminded me a lot of Lynch's classic series Twin Peaks. It is not as baffling as much of Lynch's work, and although there are shades of Lost Highway in that suddenly the characters seem to become someone else, it does have a coherent narrative that explains all (if you were paying VERY close attention!) Lynch uses his trademark intensity of imagery and sound to create an otherwordly feeling, but it is not as sinister as some of his other work and so it's rather more accessible. In fact, the first two acts of the film do seem like just another post-Tarantino mystery thriller, but the finale of the film is quite astonishing. Another stylish and seductive headf*** from the master of the macabre.
  • fb100001581602053
    December 15, 2012
    fb100001581602053
    While you watch it, the plot is not very difficult to follow, thanks to the surprising clarity in which the narrative is displayed. But hold on.... If you even try to put the pieces together and create an idea of what exactly happened, that's where Lynch's work gains its reputa... read moretion for being bafflingly confusing, nonsensical, and feverishly brilliant.
  • paulkoh110
    August 8, 2012
    paulkoh110
    Naomi Watts was fantastic with David Lynch's abstract screenplay and directing. People may say inception was confusing, well Mulholland Drive will blow their minds!
  • smith44
    July 19, 2012
    smith44
    One of the best films of 2001. A chilling dissection of hollywood, reminiscent of Sunset Bolevard and All About Eve.
  • FrizzDrop
    March 7, 2012
    FrizzDrop
    Mulholland Drive is only confusing as a film because the plot is sustained in different forms of time. It possesses the genius direction of David Lynch (much debated) who forces the film to stay coherent in some respects, and strange in many others. No one is debating that Lynch ... read morehas a flair, a contemporary feeling unmatched by others, but everyone is wondering what it all means, what we're supposed to take away from a film with no discernible plot, a strange set of characters who do things and feel things that make very little sense in the grand spectrum of life and reality, yet give this film an eerie dream logic. You can't watch this as a true neo-noir or a thriller in any sense. It's that, but without a denouement, or any true climax. The plot transitions between the story of an amnesiac who was going to be the victim of a homicide before being in a car accident, and stumbles across Betty, an aspiring actress who has just moved to Hollywood and lies around her aunt's apartment with stars in her eyes. At the same time we see a director get pushed around on his casting by some mob ties, and his wife cheat on him with the pool boy, lending to an unexpected cameo from Billy Ray Cyrus. Though these two events are supposedly linked, I see very little in the way of a constructed plot. We never find out why the amnesiac was going to be killed, there isn't much investigation into her actual set of events before the accident, and we're never sure if the last twenty minutes (where the real mindf***kery begins) is a dream sequence, a strange prologue that begins in the end, or the real set of events around the mysterious Diane but with different key players. Beside the way you feel about being made a fool of, it's the odd experience of the film that everyone either loves or hates. The reason Lynch has as many followers in cult film as Kubrick, the Coens, and Wes Anderson is because, like them, he has a form and function within his films while still being quirky, or having appropriate atmosphere. Lynch's films, and his work in television, always has a strange tone, a moody atmosphere that you can't place in real life but works well with these scenes, these anachronisms within time and space. I am not sure if I personally can get past the plot to look within the mood, because it unsettles me, and with not having a plot to cling to it's very difficult to have a certain opinion about a film without that knowledge, that qualification of good or bad. Mulholland Drive is good, but in a way that can't be explained, and in that lies the genius of Lynch. Besides that the cast was brilliant: Watts transformed seamlessly between different personas with ease, proving she truly is one of the best actresses working today. Harring looks confuzzled throughout while still retaining a blank sensuality, and Theroux is aimless and intractable. The best sense of humor in the film is a short scene with Mark Pellegrino as a bumbling convict, which lends to the narrative and the sense of danger, but is also appropriately funny. I found this film delightful in some senses and unsettling in so many others. No matter what, it's a film worth watching.
  • fb1664868775
    March 4, 2012
    fb1664868775
    David Lynch's masterpiece, frightening and funny, it's quite scary to look at Hollywood through the eyes of Lynch.
  • 366weirdmovies
    November 6, 2011
    366weirdmovies
    A naive would-be actress from Ontario meets and falls for a knockout amnesiac; impenetrable dream sequences and reality shifts follow. Beautiful confusion.
  • fb576007796
    October 29, 2011
    fb576007796
    One of my all time favorites. Llorando.
  • cosmo313
    October 6, 2011
    cosmo313
    For me, David Lynch is a lot like Stanley Kubrick: both are important, talented directed with high amounts of creativity and strong senses of personal style and vision, why is why descriptive terms such as "Lynchian" or "Kubrickian" exist The greatest strength for each is also t... read moreheir greatest weakness, and this happens to be their Lynchian or Kubrickian-ness. Both do some incredible or fascinating work, and I always have respect for them/their works, even if (mostly/especially) in the case of Lynch, I don't always knwo what the hell to think or if he's truly great or just full of crap or not. In a way, that's kind of the fun of watching his movies...a very maddening, unique kind of fun.

    I think I will choose Kubrick more for this reason, but no matter how nuts Lynch's films drive me, I'm always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because there's always at least one thing going on inhis films that I like, or because we need someone like him, because we need films like his. I don't think I could truly hate a Lynch movie, which is why if you look and see what ratings I've given to his movies, you'll notice I always give them at least a mild pass.

    The film can kinda be summed up as a neo-noir mystery thriller, but there's more to it than that. There's some self aware elements and jokes, and I got the idea that this was a satire to an extent of Hollywood and the creative porcess. A main storyline is that of an aspiring axtress helping an amnesiac woman try to find out her identity after a car crash, a crash which it turns out saved her from being murdered. A director character is getting hampered by all sorts of forces, namely shady mob types, and all of this ties into the amnesia story. Truth is, I don't truly know if I know what's going on. All I'm saying is just bits of what I've read others say, as well as some of my own observations. Honestly though, I don't know if I really want to know the truth behind this movie or what the hell really is going on.

    No one will ever say that Lynch's films don't have a great sense of mood, tone, and atmosphere, one that's almost always unnevering and distressing to boot. That's kinda why this film works. It has a dark, mysterious charm to it, and it seems like it would not be as effective if a definite answer were reached. It's like the old saying about how the journey is more important than the destination. Don't watch this movie for plot so much as for the experience of just siting through what it has to offer.

    I will say that, especially during the first half, the acting and dialogue bothered me. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but it all came off as really bad, stilted, and wooden. It got better, though. Maybe it'll not seem that way on repeated viewings? I do think the performers, especially Watts, had a tough job to do here, and they do pull it off. For me though, the real fun was seeing Billy Ray Cyrus show up briefly as a pool poy and Mark Pellegrino play a wonderfully inept and bungling hit man. There's plenty of subtle humor going on, but these two definitely bring on the more overt (and needed) humor.

    If you're new to Lynch, I'm not sure if this is a good place to start, but if you want a wild, surreal, and wonderfully artistic head trip to sit through, do give this one a chance.
  • emilkakko
    June 6, 2011
    emilkakko
    One of David Lynch's best films in his filmography. It sure is uneven and has too many characters for it's own good, but what started as a pilot-episode for a upcoming TV-series, turned into a fantastic film instead. David Lynch has always been visual genius and undisputed master... read more of dream-logic and here he finds a fantastic way to make sense of it all. Many consider this film too complicated and Lynchian for it's own good, but if you are willing to go into his twisted world, then you are in for a one of a kind ride. This could have been a hell of a TV-series, but it is great as it is now also.

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Critic Reviews

Peter Rainer
January 22, 2002
Peter Rainer, New York Magazine

Lynch needs to renew himself with an influx of the deep feeling he has for people, for outcasts, and lay off the cretins and hobgoblins and zombies for a while. Full Review

Andrew Sarris
November 8, 2001
Andrew Sarris, New York Observer

One of the very few movies in which the pieces not only add up to much more than the whole, but also supersede it with a series of (for the most part) fascinating fragments. Full Review

Liam Lacey
October 28, 2001
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

Like Twin Peaks, it keeps spooling out more narrative twists until the ingenious maze turns into an oppressive tangle. Full Review

Peter Howell
October 26, 2001
Peter Howell, Toronto Star

A movie to savour. Full Review

Stanley Kauffmann
October 24, 2001
Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic

Lynch challenges our expectations of narrative and credibility by luxuriating in something else -- the unexplained, the making of no-sense that (he says) underlies life.

Peter Travers
October 19, 2001
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Mulholland Drive makes movies feel alive again.

Rex Reed
October 19, 2001
Rex Reed, New York Observer

A load of moronic and incoherent garbage. Full Review

Joe Baltake
October 19, 2001
Joe Baltake, Sacramento Bee

This movie snakes and slithers along, keeping us off-kilter but always fascinated by its story of Hollywood dreams, a story as old as movies themselves. Full Review

Jay Boyar
October 19, 2001
Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel

The most seductively unsettling thriller about Hollywood corruption since that other street-name masterpiece, Sunset Boulevard.

Rene Rodriguez
October 19, 2001
Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald

[Lynch's] never before married his subconscious impulses to an accessible storytelling style in such a satisfying, beguiling way. Full Review

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Facts

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    • Cowboy: A man's attitude... a man's attitude goes some ways. The way his life will be. Is that somethin' you agree with?
    • Adam Kesher: Sure.
    • Cowboy: Now... did you answer cause you thought that's what I wanted to hear, or did you think about what I said and answer cause you truly believe that to be right?
    • Adam Kesher: I agree with what you said, truthfully.
    • Cowboy: What'd I say?
    • Adam Kesher: Uh... that a man's attitude determines, to a large extent, how his life will be.
    • Cowboy: So since you agree, you must be someone who does not care about the good life.
    • Adam Kesher: This is the girl.
    • Coco Lenoix: You know, there was a man that lived here once that had a prize-fighting kangaroo. Well, you just wouldn't believe what that kangaroo did to this courtyard!
    • Cowboy: When you see the girl in the picture that was shown to you earlier today, you will say, "this is the girl". The rest of the cast can stay, that's up to you. But that lead girl is "not" up to you. Now you will see me one more time, if you do good. You will see me, two more times, if you do bad. Good night.
    • Cowboy: When you see the girl in the picture that was shown to you earlier today, you will say, "this is the girl". The rest of the cast can stay, that's up to you. But that lead girl is "not" up to you. Now you will see me one more time, if you do good. You will see me, two more times, if you do bad. Good night.
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Mulholland Drive Trivia

  • In the movie Mulholland Drive, where does Betty find Rita?  Answer »
  • In Mulholland Drive, what is the name of the club Rita and Betty visit in the middle of the night?  Answer »
  • In Mulholland Drive, who plays the pool guy that Adam's wife is cheating on him with?  Answer »
  • Name the director of these films; "Wild at Heart", "Blue Velvet", "Eraserhead" and "Mulholland Drive".  Answer »
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