What a waste of my time!!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Nothing much really happens in this fifteen-minute short by David Lynch. Yet I couldn't take my eyes off the nothing much.Another reviewer claims this is a dull movie but a fine commercial. If I hadn't been told it was a commercial for Lady Dior or Luis Vuitton or Sigfried Sassoon or Max Factor, I wouldn't have known.Yes, the bespoke handbag features prominently in the film, but not TOO prominently, and it functions in the film as a link between a phantasmagorical past love and the present circumstances of the curiously boffo Marion Cotillard. She enters her hotel room, a tango from the 1920s playing on the radio, and finds this glittering handbag on the floor of her room Shanghai and two Chinese house detectives appear and ask her about it. Then they stand motionless, speechless, while she spins out this tale of experiencing deja vu at lunch. The story involves her and a lover escaping a room in 1920s Shanghai and landing on a rooftop, at which point the lover says he can't be with her and fades away while handing her a blue flower.Back to the present. Under the eyes of the two statuesque investigators, she finally opens the bag. Guess what's in it.

Just the idea, the concept of having Lynch do commercial work sounded interesting enough for me to see the film. It was a bad decision. The film is awful and bears nothing Lynch-like to it. It feels like a 15-year-old is trying to do his vision of what Lynch is and fails at making even a recognizable copy. The fact that the whole thing is a commercial and that the ubiquitous Dior with its bags stings your eyes is actually far from being the worst problem of this film. The plot is so contrived. The acting is terrible, the whole thing is edited like a student film, and hits on so many clichés one must try to justify Lynch by saying he actually made fun of them while taking their money. All is there: silly flashbacks, slow-motion disappearance of a lover as the endless love-yous are being uttered, cheesy Instagram-like sequences of blurry images... I just couldn't believe my eyes, really.

Let's get it straight first off: I am a big fan of Lynch's and I know that this is supposed to be a long ad.But that does not stop me from thinking that this short film is a ludicrous effort that only serves the purpose of reminding the viewer how great Lynch used to be, at least up to Mulholland Dr., which is now more than ten years ago! Everything, maybe except for the music, is wrong in this short. As usual the plot makes no sense at all, which could be bearable in itself, but no atmosphere is built out of the plot less story either, so the fact that there is no or little story does become a problem. Second, the Chinese actors are terrible, they are so bad that it looks like Lynch cast the first two guys he saw walking down the street. On we go. The bag as mysterious, symptomatic object (see blue box from Mulholland Dr.) is used in a ridiculous way, both when it is seen in the hotel room and on the billboard. Cotillard tries hard but there is little to do with a character that has to deliver useless "I love you" lines to a random Chinese guy waving a blue napkin (or was it a rose).Finally a word on the digital video cameras. I already disliked Inland Empire because it used them. I think Lynch should abandon this idea and go back to a more traditional technique. The sexiness of movies such as Mulholland and Lost Highway was also due to the fantastic way they were photographed. We do not need the shakiness and the low resolution of Inland Empire and of this short, they just don't add anything while they take away a lot.Now, Mr Lynch, please go back to make feature films and return to your old standards, we are tired of pointless digital video shorts.

Maybe I should be upset this is a commercial. I've never bought any Dior anything and this won't make me run out and buy an expensive handbag...but it is a great film short. Even with the Dior bag in place, the bag is so much like other Lynch objects...the blue box from Mulholland Dr., the envelope with the videotape in it in Lost Highway...it appears with flashes of electricity and smoke making me think the lead character must have ended up at the Shanghai branch of the Black Lodge. The story and there is one, is that the lead character in true Lynchian style recounts she has been there before but hasn't...that she is afraid of what is in the bag. It's interesting that Lynch choices his lead not to go to the object of the commercial. It's a nice addition to the short that seems to speak secrets.The short goes on in the lead's flashbacks to another Shanghai where she has a lover and they are trying to run away from something...almost a flashing war like atmosphere, maybe the Battle of Shanghai...and he says he loves her, but he has to leave. He disappears with a Fire Walk With Me blue rose. She is left in the room, in the present, with the bag, which has a blue rose on top of it. It has a lot of Lynch's mystery, what others call his "Women in Trouble" decade. But really Laura Palmer and Dorothy Vallens were also women in trouble from prior decades. The Blue Lady is just the newest of these creations, stuck in her 15 minutes of fame...was that a set choice, because it seems like one. It's a beautiful shot piece, I love the framing of the scenes and the story, though short and made to sell a product, is again, delightfully anti-commercial and interesting enough to watch a few times and even analyze. It's not perfect because it is a commercial first and art second, which gets a nine from me because of that. I guess Lynch has to make money somehow, since arty directors only get a tiny fraction of what mainstream directors get. But hats off to him, for taking what could be a boring commercial and making it a mysterious romp which has reflections of his past projects. I am not sure why Dior commissioned him for this, but I am glad they did. I only hope other companies hire him to do short films for their websites. It's a pleasure to view them.