Inland Empire

On the eve of getting her first major starring role in several years, the veteran actress Nikki Grace receives in her Beverly Hills mansion the visit of a ghost. The ghost is the somewhat sinister, ugly and old neighbour from the house at the end of the street: it is actually a Polish actress of the 40’s, who died at the end of shooting a film in Warsaw that never got out.

And our heroine Nikki, even without knowing it, is doomed to reenact the fateful role represented by the then young and beautiful Polish actress, both in theater and in her personal life.

With this premise the story opens together with a universe in which the brilliant David Lynch forces even more than in his earlier films elements like the language of tortuous plots, parallel universes, film playing films, and actors playing various roles at once.

All of this as we are used to, but without ever becoming repetitive, in a dream where nightmares come to life even more sinister, in which is always difficult to determine if what we see is the real story, or if it is one of the characters imagination, or if it is a flashback, or what someone wanted to be in a flashback, if these are the scenes from a film, or if the characters are actually imagining these scenes.

Lynch even manages to reverse the rules of an absurd world into his own world, where nothing seems to make sense, but everything always does: while the reality seems impossible, the ghosts are so consistent that they even age after being dead.

In "Inland Empire" the story revolves around an actress who is anxious about her new role, which involves dealing with some brutal crimes and everyday madness. Two important things are happening. First, the overflowing imagination of the filmmaker is infinite; secondly, the staging of "Inland Empire" is absolutely new, recorded in digital video, the film has long flat steady cam shootings, that give it a rough finish, very realistic, which makes a counterpoint with a completely original story that plays with a ghostly worlds and the misunderstanding between fiction and reality.

"Inland Empire" can be seen as the reality version of Haunted Mansion, or as the outcome of putting a camera in the imagination of a madman, while meet ingold acquaintances from Lynch films: we face a true visual feast, which is also a great story.

A low budget film, but of outrageous ambitions, not suitable for all age groups, that cannot leave indifferent anyone.

Director: David Lynch

Writer: David Lynch

Stars: Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons and Justin Theroux