Twin
Peaks:
Fire Walk With Me |
DIRECTOR
David
Lynch
SCREENWRITERS
David
Lynch
Robert Engels
based
on characters created by
Mark
Frost
David Lynch
PRODUCERS
Francis Bouygues
Gregg Fienberg
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Ron García
MUSIC
Angelo Badalamenti
EDITOR
Mary Sweeney
CAST
Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer)
Ray Wise (Leland Palmer)
Mädchen Amick (Shelly Johnson)
Dana Ashbrook (Bobby Briggs)
Phoebe Augustine (Ronette Pulaski)
David Bowie (Phillip Jeffries)
Eric DaRe (Leo Johnson)
Miguel Ferrer (Albert Rosenfield)
Pamela Gidley (Teresa Banks)
Heather Graham (Annie Blackburn)
Chris Isaak (Special Agent Desmond)
Moira Kelly (Donna Hayward)
Peggy Lipton (Norma Jennings)
David Lynch (F.B.I. Chief Gordon Cole)
James Marshall (James Hurley)
Jürgen Prochnow (Woodsman)
Harry Dean Stanton (Carl)
Kiefer Sutherland (Agent Sam Stanley)
Lenny von Dohlen (Harold Smith)
Grace Zabriskie (Sarah Palmer)
Kyle MacLachlan (Agent Dale Cooper)
Frances Bay (Mrs. Tremond)
Catherine E. Coulson (The Log Lady)
Michael J. Anderson (Man from Another Place)
Frank Silva (Killer Bob)
Walter Olkewicz (Jacques Renault)
Al Strobel (Philip Gerard)
Gary Hershberger (Mike Nelson)
Sandra Kinder (Irene at Hap's)
Rick Aiello (Deputy Cliff Howard)
Gary Bullock (Sheriff Cable)
Kimberly Ann Cole (Lil the Dancer)
Julee Cruise (Roadhouse Singer)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 135m
U.S. release: August 28, 1992
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Other David
Lynch films
reviewed on this website:
- Dune
- Lost
Highway
- Mulholland
Drive
- The
Straight Story
- Wild
at Heart
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After the Elvis impersonations
and Wizard of Oz nonsense in David Lynch's last movie,
the flawed but hot-bloodedly fascinating Wild
at Heart, it's a relief to see him returning to cool,
dreamlike obsession in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
Parts of it are foolish, but much of it is as daring and fierce
as anything this always-powerful director has done, and I wish
I could recommend it to everybody. But, alas, not everyone has
seen Twin
Peaks, the defunct TV show to which this film is a prequel,
and if you go into Fire Walk With Me with no prior Peaks
knowledge, you'll likely get hopelessly lost. Fair warning.
For those who did watch the show -- those who know who
killed Laura Palmer, who Waldo and Diane are, and whether Agent
Cooper's favorite gum is coming back in style -- Fire Walk
With Me, written by Lynch and Robert Engels, offers a wealth
of pleasures. Don't listen to critics who dismiss it as incomprehensible:
they probably never saw the show and don't know what they're
watching or what they're talking about. If you were a fan of
Twin Peaks, and stuck with it through the goofiness of
its last season, the movie is a parting gift to you. Repay the
gesture: Fire Walk With Me has a limited audience as it
is, and it needs you, the dedicated Peaks-heads, to sustain
it in theaters before it's consigned to video.
The show opened with Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) already dead --
"wrapped in plastic." Here, Lynch unwraps her. I'll
be vague about the plot, even though those who watched the show,
and even many who didn't, know how the movie ends. From the show,
and from the tie-in book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer
(written by Lynch's daughter Jennifer), we learned that this
Homecoming Queen had a dark side -- cocaine, prostitution --
and a personal tormentor named Bob, who visited her at night.
The movie, which presents the last few days in Laura's life,
shows us the full squalor of her existence, the deepest reaches
of her pain. Though Lynch dabbles in other areas of the show,
it's Laura's misery and self-loathing that provide Fire's
emotional pull. We feel protective of her, and because we know
she's going to die, her situation becomes that much more poignant;
some of the scenes have the sting of great tragedy.
Sheryl Lee, a healthy-looking actress with a wide, toothy grin,
played a mock version of Glinda the Good Witch in Wild at
Heart before becoming TV's most famous corpse. In the series,
she got to act a little, first as a figure in Agent Cooper's
dream and then as Laura's cousin Madeleine. Those earlier appearances
don't prepare you for her bravura work here. Lynch's camera feasts
on Lee; he lights her to resemble a wounded angel -- Glinda the
Bad Witch. Lee has one moment -- laughing helplessly after her
boyfriend Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) has committed some ultraviolence
-- that I doubt any actress could improve upon. People attack
Lynch for the way he treats women in his films, but he writes
roles actresses can triumph in.
And the rest of the film? It's erratic, sadly. Moira Kelly pinch-hits
for Lara Flynn Boyle as the innocent Donna Heyward, and though
she has a much warmer presence than Boyle (and is likely the
better actress), it's undeniably jarring to see someone else
as Donna after all those episodes of Boyle's Donna mourning Laura.
Lynch putters around with two FBI agents (Kiefer Sutherland and
Chris Isaak) -- they're investigating the murder of Teresa Banks,
the victim prior to Laura -- who have so little impact that we
long for Kyle MacLachlan's Zen-Boy-Scout Dale Cooper, who's blown
off in a few clumsy scenes.
There's a good deal of Black
Lodge mystification -- spooky dreams and hallucinations that
could mean anything and distract a bit from the thrust of Laura's
story (though some of the oddball images will stay with you).
Various characters familiar from the show walk on, sometimes
for mere seconds, to remind us we're at a Twin Peaks movie.
Lynch also recruits some cult figures (such as Harry Dean Stanton)
purely for their bizarro appeal; David Bowie appears, babbles,
and disappears, in the film's most shameless "Huh?"
moment. Some of the show's trademark images have worn out their
welcome, even the famous Man from Another Place (dancing dwarf).
But the film's core burns intensely enough to make up for all
the digressions. We already knew who killed Laura Palmer; the
unsettling revelation of the movie is that it hardly mattered
who. She'd been doing a good job of it herself.
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