CULT MOVIE: BLUE VELVET (1986)

Repellent, fascinating, surreal-- this is the kind of film for which critics ransack their entire vocabulary of adjectives. Never comfortable viewing, with the tone set from the opening shot of impossibly blue skies and white fences contrasted with wet, dark beetles. MacLachlan plays Jeffrey Beaumont, a character with certain similarities to the director (echoes which the actor played up by dressing and buttoning his shirt like Lynch) who finds a human ear and is embroiled in a horrific small-town mystery. Underneath all of Lynch's trickery, this is a very personal film. Many scenes (including the controversial scene where Hopper rapes and degrades Rossellini) have some link to the director's childhood memories. That may be why, for all the violence, this story always has a weird logic which propels it relentlessly forward.
Director: David Lynch Cast: Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper

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