Lost Highway -- 1997 -- R

That was interesting...and weird. Then again, it's a film by David Lynch; honestly, what was I expecting? A film with a normal plot line and development? That's like expecting Uwe Boll to make a good, thought-provoking film...zing! No, this is David Lynch, and the film is like something out of a dream.

Geez, where to begin here...I am still working this film out in attempting to make heads and tails of it. Maybe I should watch it again, kind of like I feel about Mulholland Drive. We start out with Fred Madison getting buzzed by someone on the outside with a message that Dick Laurent is dead. Fred looks outside and sees no one there, and the message is weird and means nothing to us for quite some time. Fred and his wife, Renee, appear to be a happy couple. He works as a musician, and they seem to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. One day, Renee finds an envelope with a videotape in it. When they watch it, they see their house filmed from the outside. As the days wear on, more and more of this video is left on their doorstep heightening the tension of this first half of the film. We actually breeze through this first portion of the film; it's paced and executed very well, and it's very tense.

We finally meet someone named Andy who knows this Dick Laurent character and insists that Dick is not dead. He actually seems to be a bit flipped out about it. Then we find this mystery dude who insists he met Fred at Fred's house, and Fred, of course, doesn't know this guy. The guy notes that he is at Fred's house right now. Say what? Sure, that gets our attention. Fred calls his house, and the guy answers! If this were any other movie (you know, like Cinderella III), we'd have poo-pooed the thing and flipped it off by now, but this is David Lynch, and somehow this logic twist works within the warped framework he has setup.

Stuff happens I'd rather not spoil, and Fred ends up in prison, but at one point, the guard looks in Fred's cell and Fred is not Fred any more. Fred is now Pete Dayton, a 19 year old felon on probation and living with his parents. They release Pete to his parents' custody, and so begins the second part of this movie and a skid back to setting up this portion of the film. The next twenty minutes are probably the slowest, not because they are done badly, but because we just came off the high of the first part, and now we have to have a lot of new exposition to understand what is happening next.

It gets even weirder from here as Pete meets this blonde by the name of Alice who looks just like Renee. Alice is the number one girl of Eddie (aka Dick) Laurent who is supposed to be dead, and Pete is a buddy of Eddie. While you're trying to piece all this together and figure out how it relates to the first part of the film, you learn that something happened with Pete and neither his parents, nor his girlfriend, Sheila, wish to talk about it. Everything starts merging near the end and we get a neat little bookend with one of our characters going up to Fred's door at the end and stating that Dick Laurent is dead. From there, you're on your own...

Hard to say a lot more about it. The characters are fairly well drawn for what they are and how they play out. The plot is...well, good luck with that. Being curious as to what is going to happen next is what keeps you glued to this one, because it is so wonderfully unpredictable.

What's real? What's not? That's up to you. I'm sure Lynch has his own plan and just laughs at what people come up with. This is not a film for everyone, but it is definitely different. Like most Lynch films, it's like watching a dream, and if you approach it from that angle of it being a dream, it'll suck you in.