Lady Blue Shanghai

Dior was like "hey David, can you do like a little short thing to promote our handbag? you can do whatever you want as long as you show the bag" and David Lynch was like "Whatever I want you say?".

And he did.

It doesn't work as a commercial, but it's a fantastic David Lynch short. It has a blue rose in it, so maybe there's some Twin Peaks connections (or maybe I'm just obssesed with connecting all of his works).

David Lynch's new short is only 16 minutes but it's really good. It is everything you would expect from him, it is dreamy, surreal, and visually hypnotic. I have yet to see Inland Empire but I was not that impressed with his output over the last decade. Mulholland Drive was pretty good, but I didn't like the online releases very much. I think Lady Blue Shanghai shows promise for the rest of Lynch's career. Hopefully he will release some more shorts like this and maybe even a movie or two. I hope he does soon, I really enjoy his works. He has so much potential as a director, it's disappointing that he has been in a moderately dormant stage for the past few years. I think that Lady Blue Shanghai is Lynch's best short ever, and he has some very good shorts, such as The Alphabet, Lumiere, and Absurda. All of those were good, but this is even better. It's probably the most dream-like piece I've ever seen him do, and that's really saying something. If you are a David Lynch fan I would recommend you watch this right now. If you like his style then you will probably enjoy this a lot. If you're fairly new to David Lynch but are interested, I still suggest you watch it. It's really good and I hope to see more like it.

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.

Apparently, and maybe I'm thick-in-the-head, this David Lynch short film is a commercial for Lady Dior, which is basically a really fancy handbag. This isn't a surprise that Lynch would make a commercial - he has made several over the years, maybe as a means to get some of his ideas out there into the cinematic medium, and maybe, perhaps, to get some quick money. But this is a little different: this is a 16 minute film where it's really about a woman who goes to a hotel, a record is playing mysteriously in her room, and a handbag shines very brightly. She calls the hotel-help asking what is going on, and then tells a story of meeting a man before... or thinking she's met a man before, in Shanghai.

The power of this short film is that a) I didn't have any real clue that it was a long-form commercial while watching it, and b) it carries the kind of unique mystery that Lynch unlocks with his approach to cinema - the cinematography (in this case digital video, with a more sophisticated eye than the experimentation of Inland Empire), the editing that emphasizes the human face and the enigmatic movement of characters in the frame, sound editing that is not-of-this world. I still am not quite sure what it's all about, or if it's really what it is in that handbag (I'm more-so reminded of the elusive nature of the blue box from Mulholland Drive), and I almost don't want to know, at least not until two or three more viewings. It also is a big asset that Cotillard, stunning in appearance and her quiet intensity, works so well here for him as his female-muse.

Does it mean as much as his other short films? I'm still not sure about that either. Compared to some of the works on his Short Films of David Lynch or Best of DavidLynch.com DVDs, its not any kind of absurd thing he's dealing with here. It's like a splintered-in-his-mind romantic drama where love and loss and memory and not knowing converge into something one can look at and maybe recognize, or just feel. It's sublime work by a master of his self-made craft.

This 16-minute internet-aired motion picture was created by Dior. It was available until October 2010 on Dior's website and the name Dior appears on-screen outside the picture viewing area. Except for this the viewer would have no idea that the picture was advertising for Dior.

The picture opens with Cotillard, whose character is not given a name in the motion picture, hearing a 1920s tango ("Fate-Tango Valentino" written by Nathaniel Shilkret to commemorate Rudolph Valentino) in the hall as she walks to her hotel suite. She opens the door to see a circa 1940 RCA Victor phonograph playing Shilkret's original 78 rpm recording of the song. An expensive Dior handbag then appears amidst elaborate visual effects involving smoke. The remainder of the film is devoted to her reaction and the events leading to these mysterious happenings.

The film is extremely well done, using sound and visual effects characteristic of David Lynch audio-video productions and with Cotillard giving an excellent performance.

Thanks, Dior, for creating an entertaining film and for not ruining it with intrusive advertising.