Blue Velvet

David Lynch, 1986, USA, 120 mm

Blue Velvet’s opening scene represents to the viewer a picturesque, idyllic paradise set within the quiet logging town of Lumberton: white picket fences as far as the eye can see, vivid green grasses… It follows the story of Jeffery Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who, after discovering a severed ear in a field, embarks upon a search for its owner, accompanied by Detective’s daughter Sandy (Laura Dern). This exploration drags Jeffery into a sordid, sinister underworld, a descent marked by the introduction of Isabella Rossellini’s beguiling nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens.

Beaumont and Vallens embark upon an initially voyeuristic, and at times almost disturbing, relationship, which does not bode well with Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), the resident sociopathic gang leader. Intrigued by the hold Booth appears to have over Dorothy, Jeffery cannot help but investigate further, finding himself sucked further into this criminal underworld.

The relationship between the two also begins to impede the development of Jeffery’s budding romance with Sandy. Dern delivers an understated performance, so much so that at points she runs the risk of fading into insignificance.

The film is worth seeing for Dennis Hopper’s performance alone, which is in equal parts hilarious and disconcerting. Strangely reminiscent of both Twin Peaks and 1950s noir, the film teeters between surreal and enthralling, at times verging on the disturbing, all factors that have endeared it to viewers and ensured its cult status.

Review by Gemma Riddler
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2009

Reviewed at its release as "one of the sickest movies of all time" but also named best film of 1986 by the US National Society of Film Critics, Blue Velvet falls neatly into both categories. It is a bizarrely repellent kinky thriller which begins with a man watering his lawn before suffering a heart attack while the camera dives into a severed ear lying in the grass.

Set in a small rural logging town seemingly stuck in Eisenhower's 50s America, Lynch shows us the dark side of the clean-living facade that is Lumbertown USA.

Though missing the supernatural element, the film carries many of the hall-marks of his later TV "soap from Hell" - Twin Peaks. Hopper thoroughly enjoys himself playing possibly the only screen psychotic with an inhaler, while the moody ]effrey (MacLachlan) and the angelic Sandy (Dem) naively blunder about exclaiming every now and again that "It's a strange world".

Interestingly Isabella Rossellini (the masochistic night club singer) is the daughter of Ingrid Bergman while the grotesque drag queen is played by Dean Stockwell the cutesy child star from the Gene Kelly/Sinatra 1946 musical Anchors Aweigh. A thoroughly enjoyable film proving once again that only a brave man with a large stick would offer David Lynch the psychotherapy that he would seem to most richly deserve.

Review by Dave Pallin
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95