Saw Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue for the first time the other night, and it's tremendous. The thing that struck me most strongly is what a terrific double bill it would make with Mulholland Dr: they're both about the tragic yearnings of ingénue wannabes who start tripping on their own fear of failure. Just as Naomi Watts' Diane/Betty splits herself in two, acting out a version of her own celebrity that's separated by an abyss from the fetid truth, Satoshi's heroine Mima begins to doubt her own identity and her very name, both of which are wrested away from her by a industry smacking its lips over the prospect of her humiliation. In both films, the starlets' insecurities about being chewed up and spat out by the image factory are manifested as malicious wraiths chasing them away from their own sanity. Acting as prostitution, filmmaking as rape. Lynch's has the stronger ending, but both spiral dizzyingly down.
Perfect Blue: A-
Mulholland Dr: A
1 comment:
That is just what I thought. Is there any chance that David Lynch was influenced by "Perfect Blue"? Or the other way around?
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