‘Mulholland Drive’: the thriller Philip Seymour Hoffman called a “pretty sexy” movie
The realm of arthouse cinema is notorious for effortlessly gelling with the romance and the erotic genre, given that each feature possesses an intense and sentimental undertone. Filmmakers demonstrate a fascination with love and sex through artistic approaches, attempting to delve into emotion more than the rationality present in a more traditional movie. One film figure who could detect this pattern was actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, known for his roles in Scent of a Woman, The Big Lebowski and Magnolia.
Hoffman, speaking during Cannes 2002, was asked by InStyle to name his favourite romance movie and what he considered the sexiest movie ever made. With potential answers including Kar Wai Wong’s In the Mood for Love, Alfonso Cuarón’s And Your Mother Too and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Hoffman went for a more surrealist and complex title.
“Mulholland Drive is pretty sexy,” he replied. This is the 2001 surrealist film noir mystery written and directed by the master of surrealism, David Lynch. Mulholland Drive stars Naomi Watts, an aspiring actor, and Laura Harring, a car crash victim who comes into her company. The duo team up to discover who Harring’s amnesiac character truly is, leading to an unconventional yet conceptual analysis of Hollywood and an exploration of reality vs delusion.
Lynch’s eccentric and symbolic feature has perplexed audiences for years after release, with the director refusing to give detailed explanations. Despite its cognitive merit, some viewers, such as Hoffman and Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, only take Mulholland Drive for its erotic face value. The film showcases a sapphic relationship, as Watts and Harring’s characters have sex to recover from stumbling upon a dead body during their search.
Reflecting on the work, Harring later discussed the sex scene during with The Hollywood Reporter in 2019, stating: “I’m not going to lie: I felt very vulnerable. I was in my dressing room and was on the verge of tears. It’s hard. There are a lot of people there … Naomi and I were friends. It was pretty awkward.”
This intense and pivotal plot point transforms Lynch’s inspection of the entertainment industry partially into a lustful and sensual dynamic, one that clearly has a powerful hold on audiences in addition to the perplexing narrative.
This fracture between genre, style and response due to a sapphic demonstration can also be detected in Bound, the 1996 film directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski and starring Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. Tilly and Gershon play two women who engage in an intense affair despite Tilly’s character being married to a mafia member, played by Joe Pantoliano. Despite a thrilling and engaging crime story that amplifies tension throughout the third act, Bound is mainly tied in with sexy film lists due to the one early sex scene between the protagonists.
The other side of Mulholland Drive presents an artistic and innovative take on the psychological thriller to balance out its erotic nature, maintaining an engaging detective story loaded with carefully placed clues that has to be re-watched. The film showcases a mystery internally while being a mystery itself, as there has yet to be a definitive reading of its content and presentation. It’s possible to view the story as a Möbius strip, meaning a band with no beginning or end, just ongoing.
One interpretation of the film argues the first half, which involves the main characters’ sex scene, is a dream, with the harsh reality proposing one despises the other in a jealous and hate-fuelled rage, going so far as to have her killed. This outline juxtaposes the previous passionate and lubricious tone and citation as a “sexy movie”.
