A mysterious car stops in an inhospitable place. A woman, very pretty, is forced out of it. Something is about to happen. But suddenly, another car comes crashing violently. It is a spectacular accident. The woman, Rita (Laura Elena Harring), comes through with nothing but scratches. A little disoriented, she ends up taking refuge in a house. That is where, the next day, Betty (Naomi Watts) arrives, a blond girl coming to Hollywood to make it as a star. They become friends. They look like each other’s distorted mirror: a traumatized woman who lost her memory; an innocent woman facing the world of cinema. Lynch assembles us a seemingly simple story in order to, little by little, distort, fragment, and destroy it. Using a series of genres (horror, comedy, nonsense, musical, etc.), the director builds an intricate puzzle, as if cinema – and especially Hollywood – were (or, actually, is) a weird and secret organization that, like puppets, imposes an alternative and merciless reality. Lynch plays here in his favorite territory: that of the almost “incomprehensible” film – by playing in an arena of constant ellipsis and enigmatic characters – but that comes down to a contradictory, confusing apparatus, like Hollywood itself. Can there be a more faithful and, at the same time, crazier portrait than this? (DR)