'Blue Velvet stunning —but not pleasant watching

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 48

'Blue Velvet stunning —but not pleasant watching

David Clarkson

"Blue Velvet" presents itself as a dark and brutal masterpiece. H may he right. The video is stunning, hut not pleasant watching. It is not long since the film was screening In Christchurch cinemas, and now C.R.S. Fox has put il out on video. David Lynch wrote and directed the film, but Its atmospherics also owe much Io the director of photography, Frederick Limes. These two have brought a surreal quality to tne film, an effect that heightens even further the sharp intrusion of violence.

The film presents a kind of survey of the way violence is used and abused, in ordinary lives. But it does this by mixing up some ordinary lives, with some very extraordinary lives.

Kyle MacLachlan, the well-know rider of giant worms from "Dune," plays a young man who returns home after his father is injured In a household accident, He finds a severed ear In a field nearby, and when he hands it over to the police, gradually gets more deeply Involved in a horrible tangle of kidnapping, rape and murder. For Dennis Hopper, life is a gas. He has kidnapped the husband and son of the woman who is the object of his lust (Isabella Rossellini), with the sole intention of forcing her to have sex with him,

MacLachlan. hiding in a wardrobe, witnesses one of these terrifying sessions. when Hopper sucks on a gas bottle to intoxi-

cate himself before beating and raping the woman. But the real shock for MacLrchlan is when he goes to the woman’s aid later, and she asks him to beat her also, MacLachlan and Laura Dem are the two young people who set about their own amateurish investigation to solve the crime. They tackle the task with a breathlessness that would be justice to the Famous Five, There is a real sense of paranoia about the proceedings as the enigma unfolds and the young pair carefully test out who can be trusted. The film carries a restricted rating. It is shot through with terrible violence, and Dennis Hopper's choice of lanS shows a certain •mindedness of purpose, if not imagination.