Mulholland Drive

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * * )

The end credits rolled. Above the sound of head-scratching and perplexed murmurs, a lone voice rang out: "What happened?"

Yes, thank you chap in the Civic back row at the Auckland film festival screening of David Lynch's long-awaited latest offering - a gripping, baffling, bloodcurdling and strangely sexy film that may well be his best since Blue Velvet. You saved problem No 1 about discussing Mulholland Drive: where do you start?

Well, where Lynch himself started wasn't with a film. It started as a television pilot for ABC, who might have hoped that America's favourite surrealist had another Twin Peaks in him. After all, he sure had mellowed with his previous feature, The Straight Story.

But, no, the pilot was rejected by ABC and other networks so Lynch went back to his laboratory and retooled it into a feature.

The result still shows the signs of its origins - some characters who might look like key figures in the early reels simply disappear. And as for the scary hairy homeless guy who lives out back of the coffee shop, well, had it become a television series he might have become the Log Lady - or the Kramer - of the piece.

However, the film still centres on the pairing of Betty (Watts), who we first meet as the starry-eyed Hollywood new arrival, and Rita (Harring), an amnesiac who has wandered into Betty's borrowed apartment after a violent encounter in the Hollywood Hills. Despite having important auditions to rehearse for, Betty can't put aside her natural Nancy Drew tendencies to help retrace Rita's mysterious past. And find where she got all that cash in her purse.

Meanwhile, an uptight and hip young director Adam Kesher (Theroux) is having problems with the casting of his next feature. His mob-connected backers want him to cast a certain actress.

And in a dark room behind the double-glazing, a wheelchair-bound dwarf tycoon seems to be pulling everybody's strings. The little guy may well be an allusion to Howard Hughes - as well as a snowballing sense of dread, Lynch infuses the whole thing with an air of old Hollywood gothic, starting from when Rita names herself Rita Hayworth after seeing a poster for Gilda.

Of course (well, we got this far before invoking the Lynch-cliche), everything is not what it seems. And sometimes, it just goofs around for laughs - whether it's the white stetsoned character named "the Cowboy" who puts the hard word on the director. Or when Kesher returns home to find the gardener (Billy Ray Cyrus, mullet intact after all these years) in bed with his wife and exacts a gentle, if ludicrous revenge.

From there, Mulholland Drive seems to develop quite a few on- and off-ramps for its labyrinthine plot, and it's best to hold on for the increasingly wild ride. But it still holds the attention, unlike Lynch's dull and gimmicky Lost Highway, which also ran on dream logic.

It may all be Betty's nightmare - though where it starts and if anyone wakes up along the way are moot points. One thing's for sure, it's a briefly erotic one, care of its much-discussed sex scenes.

There may be a film-within-a-film indicated by some visual clues. Or it may be a big time loop, its structure something akin to a snake eating is own tail.

Fortunately, the leading pair's alluring performances help to keep something other than just the intellect engaged, especially Watts. Playing Betty's first audition opposite a leathery old Hollywood star, Watts is devastating as she switches off the ingenue act and shows what burns beneath.

It's just one unforgettable scene in a movie full of them, some best viewed from between your fingers. It may start out feeling familiar to the Lynch faithful but it ends up a bewildering wonder. A month and a bit after "What happened?" it's still fun knowing there's no simple answer to that question.

Cast: Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux

Director: David Lynch

Rating: R16 (sex scenes, violence)

Running time: 146m

Screening: Rialto from Thursday