Mulholland Drive 🎥 2001 Movie Info

Plot Summary

The film opens with brightly lit images of couples dancing the jitterbug, over which a young blonde woman appears smiling and being applauded. This is followed by a point-of-view shot descending toward a pillow as someone lies down. At night on Mulholland Drive, a brunette woman in an elegant evening dress narrowly escapes being shot by her chauffeur when another car crashes into them. Left with amnesia, she wanders into Los Angeles and hides in a vacant apartment. The next morning, she is discovered by Betty Elms, an aspiring actress newly arrived from Deep River, Ontario, to stay at her aunt’s place.

The brunette adopts the name “Rita” after seeing a poster of Rita Hayworth and recalls only that she is in danger. The two become friends and discover a blue key and a large sum of cash in Rita’s purse. A man eating at a diner with a friend recounts a nightmare in which he encounters a monstrous figure in the alley behind the diner. When he and his friend go outside to investigate, a homeless person covered in filth suddenly appears from around a corner and stares at him as predicted by his nightmare, and he collapses in shock. Film director Adam Kesher is pressured by mob-connected businessmen to cast an unknown blonde, Camilla Rhodes, in his new project The Sylvia North Story.

When he refuses, the mob shuts down production and freezes his accounts. He returns home to find his wife cheating on him, is beaten and thrown out of his house, and rejects a sexual advance from his assistant. A mysterious cowboy warns him to cast Camilla. Elsewhere, incompetent hitman Joe Messing botches a job, killing bystanders. Rita remembers the name “Diane Selwyn” and Betty locates her address in a phone book. A seemingly psychic neighbor knocks on the apartment door, warning that “someone is in trouble”, and the building manager Coco later cautions Betty about letting Rita stay.

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