someone explain Mulholland Drive

Another night, another movie. Recently, I've been trying to figure out Mullholland Drive. The last time I saw this movie was a couple of years ago. I remember liking the look, but feeling thoroughly confused.

Last night I decided to give it another chance. This time, with a little help from other movie fans, I think I got it...Most of it. This is my take on the gist of the film. I still have some questions, most in the final third, but that's ok. I know I will have fun trying to figure them out. So glad I gave this movie another shot! Is a new favorite!

It goes without saying, but spoilers follow as I am dissecting the plot.

Film opens with a dream of a dance competition (Jitterbug?) The pretty blonde girl, Diane / Betty seems to be the winner. She is surrounded by 2 presumed family members, an old man and old woman.

The dreamer seems to wake up suddenly, jarringly, and then go back to sleep. You never see her, just her falling back on the pillow. Now the major portion of the movie, the fantasy, starts. We follow a limo taking a beautiful young woman, Rita / Camilla, to her destination, Mullholland Drive. They stop abruptly and she is told at gunpoint to get out. Before she can be shot, 2 cars of drag racing kids hit them and she is saved from the assassination. She stumbles into a residential area and hides in the home of a character called "Aunt Ruth."

Ruth is leaving on business (she is an actress) and her niece Betty is coming to stay. When the gorgeous young ingénue, Betty, arrives at the airport, she is talking to an elderly couple she met on the plane. They seem very taken with her. Dialog and acting is all WAY OVER THE TOP. This is done to show how EVERYBODY must just instantly love the appealing Betty - What a GREAT girl. When the couple leave Betty and take off in a cab, they chuckle with one another - like they are sharing a secret - The secret being that they know who Betty really is (Diane) and that she is no good.

Betty finds Rita at the apartment. Rita has lost her memory and is helpless without help from Betty. Giddy and sleuth like, Betty is all ready to help Rita. She has a little audition to get out of the way first and scores the part. The agents there are so thrilled by her performance that they take her to audition for a better picture. The director is obviously taken with Betty, but he never gets the chance to audition her. See, he has been ordered by some kind of casting mafia to give the role to a girl named Camilla, which he grudgingly does. Betty realizing she is late to meet Rita, runs out to meet her. She doesn't even care about the role! She just wants to help her friend. Could Betty be any sweeter?

When they look into Rita's purse, they find money and a blue key. Their investigation into Rita's past leads them to a Diane Selwick. The name triggered something in Rita's memory, but more interestingly, is the way the name comes into play. There is a waitress named Diane, who is obviously really Betty. She smiles at Betty Wink Wink Nudge Nudge. Winkies, get it? To further solidify this, when they call Diane Selwick, they get a voicemail. Rita just says, that's not my voice. It isn't. It is Diane/Betty's

They meet Diane's neighbor who shows them to Diane's apartment - they "switched" apartments earlier. When they sneak into Diane's apartment, they find a dead woman on the bed. They run out horrified and Rita wants to change her appearance. That night Rita sports a blonde wig and they make love. They wake up when Rita wants to go to the Club Sinencio. There, they break down and cry and discover a blue box which matches the blue key.

Back at the apartment, Betty disappears. Rita tries to open the box. We zoom into the box, the box falls on the carpet, the picture falters, and we see Aunt Ruth looking into the bedroom. There is no box on the floor and no sign that anyone has been in there.

We are now in the Real World. Diane Selwick, Betty, wakes up in her apartment. She is sleeping in the same fashion as the corpse in the dream. We get the idea that Diane and her neighbor were once roommates and that She moved out to another apartment after they broke up. She comes back to claim her things. Diane also sees a blue key on the table. When she leaves, Camilla, Rita, is suddenly there. Effort is made to show us that this is all a fantasy. They make love and Rita calls the relationship quits. She leaves, Diane masturbates, reliving a party where Camilla reveals that she is making out with other women and is going to marry the director. We also learn that Diane was an aspiring actress and that Camilla won a role she had auditioned for. We then go to a scene in Winkies diner where Diane pays a hitman 50K to kill Camilla. He says that she will receive a blue key when the deed is done (hence, we know that the last episode with Rita/Camilla is a fantasy - The key tells us she is dead. Note also the placement of the ashtray).

With the horror of what she has done closing in on her in the form of the elderly couple, Diane runs into the bedroom and shoots herself. End.

The rest is just, well, Lynch. Strangeness will abound. Keep in mind also that this was originally shot as a pilot for a second TV series, so there may be elements that were meant to be something else entirely but were kept for their appeal. Awesome film. Questions keep popping up. IAnd I still question my take on the film. How much dreaming is really going on here. Is Camilla / Rita a fantasy in her entirety? Was the real relationship always with the jilted neighbor, prettied up in Diane's fantasy world? Diane and her neighbor switched apartments...I wonder, is there a dead girl on the bed in Diane's neigbor's apartment? Ooooo! I like that! Now I have to watch it again!

The first half is the dream of the girl in the second half, a dream she has before killing herself for hiring a man to kill her girlfriend. There are clues throughout. The beginning reads as a typical Hollywood story of the young ingenue coming to Hollywood to be a movie star. Because the girl is an actress, this is how her dreams play out. The money and the key replay in her dream, because those are the symbols of the murder that she committed (through a hitman). The money is the same amount that the murder cost, and the key was left on her coffee table as a sign that the murder was finished.

There are some things, like the shoot out in the office (where the vacuum cleaner gets shot) that don't really add up, but they may be remnants from the original pilot