Inland Empire

Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) en Devon Berk (Justin Theroux) worden gevraagd om de hoofdrollen te spelen in de nieuwste film van regisseur Kingsley Stewart’s (Jeremy Irons), ‘On High in Blue Tomorrows’. Al gauw raakt Nikki in de problemen wanneer ze wel erg diep in haar rol opgaat en haar dagelijks leven begint te verwarren met het leven dat haar personage leeft. De film ‘On High in Blue Tomorrows’ was al eerder in productie, maar is nooit afgekomen omdat de toenmalige hoofdrolspelers vermoord zijn. Er lijkt al met al een vloek op de film te rusten. Dit vormt genoeg aanleiding tot een bizarre film zoals enkel Lynch die kan maken.

 

Cinema of the surreal icon David Lynch follows up the success of his critically acclaimed 2001 feature Mulholland Drive with this dark mystery, shot on a handheld Sony PD150 digital video recorder. It is the tale of an actress whose personality becomes increasingly fragmented as she delves ever deeper into her work for a high-profile filmmaker. Kingsley (Jeremy Irons) is a director looking to adapt for the screen a Polish gypsy folktale that was previously stalled when the two leads were viciously murdered. Having offered the female lead to devoted actress Nikki (Laura Dern), Kingsley warns her male co-star, Devon (Justin Theroux), to maintain his professional distance, as Nikki’s husband (Peter J. Lucas) is known to be notoriously possessive. As the passionate co-stars quickly cross the line and become lovers, Nikki’s slowly slipping sense of reality causes her to eventually become lost in her character while the mysterious story of a Polish couple unfurls, and a trio of giant stage-bound rabbits (voices of Naomi Watts, Scott Coffey, and Laura Harring) lounge around on the sofa and tend to their domestic duties. Shot over the course of two and a half years and without a formalized script, Lynch’s hallucinogenic look at a doomed film project features all of the abstract imagery and strange symbolism that have long made the director a favorite of film fans who embrace his disorienting approach to unconventional storytelling.