Editing Mulholland Drive (film) (section)

===Romantic content===
The relationships between Betty and Rita, and Diane and Camilla have been variously described as "touching," "moving," as well as "titillating." The French critic Thierry Jousse, in his review for ''[[Cahiers du Cinéma]]'', said that the love between the women depicted is "of lyricism practically without equal in contemporary cinema."<ref>Thierry Jousse, "L'amour à mort," in ''Pendant les travaux, le cinéma reste ouvert'', by ''[[Cahiers du cinéma]]'' (2003): 200.</ref> In the pages of ''[[Film Comment]]'', [[Phillip Lopate]] states that the pivotal romantic interlude between Betty and Rita was made poignant and tender by Betty's "understanding for the first time, with self-surprise, that all her helpfulness and curiosity about the other woman had a point: desire&nbsp;... It is a beautiful moment, made all the more miraculous by its earned tenderness, and its distances from anything lurid."<ref name="lopate">[[Phillip Lopate]], "[http://www.lynchnet.com/mdrive/filmc1.html Welcome to L. A.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131004215340/http://www.lynchnet.com/mdrive/filmc1.html |date=October 4, 2013 }}", ''[[Film Comment]]'' 5, no. 37 (September/October 2001): 44–45.</ref> [[Stephanie Zacharek]] of [[Salon (magazine)|''Salon'' magazine]] stated that the scene's "eroticism [was] so potent it blankets the whole movie, coloring every scene that came before and every one that follows."<ref name="zacharek">[[Stephanie Zacharek]], "[http://www.salon.com/2001/10/12/mulholland_drive/ David Lynch's latest tour de force] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131115023845/http://www.salon.com/2001/10/12/mulholland_drive/ |date=November 15, 2013 }}", ''[[Salon (magazine)|Salon]]'', October 12, 2001.</ref> Betty and Rita were chosen by the [[Independent Film Channel]] as the emblematic romantic couple of the 2000s. Writer Charles Taylor said, "Betty and Rita are often framed against darkness so soft and velvety it's like a hovering [[halo (religious iconography)|nimbus]], ready to swallow them if they awake from the film's dream. And when they are swallowed, when smoke fills the frame as if the sulfur of hell itself were obscuring our vision, we feel as if not just a romance has been broken, but the beauty of the world has been cursed."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ifc.com/fix/2009/12/naughts-romantic-pair |title=The Naughts: The Romantic Pair of the '00s – IFC |last=Taylor |first=Charles |publisher=[[Independent Film Channel|ifc.com]] |date=December 9, 2009 |access-date=August 17, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120729151921/http://www.ifc.com/fix/2009/12/naughts-romantic-pair |archive-date=July 29, 2012 }}</ref>

Some film theorists have argued that Lynch inserts [[queerness]] in the aesthetic and thematic content of the film. The non-linear film is "incapable of sustaining narrative coherence," as Lee Wallace argues, and "[[lesbianism]] dissolves the ideological conventions of narrative [[Realism (arts)|realism]], operating as the switch point for the contesting storyworlds within Lynch's elaborately plotted film."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Wallace|first=Lee|title=Lesbianism, Cinema, Space|publisher=Routledge|year=2009|isbn=978-0-415-99243-5|location=New York|pages=99–116}}</ref> The presence of mirrors and doppelgangers throughout the film "are common representations of lesbian desire."<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Postfeminism and the Fatale Figure in Neo-Noir Cinema |last=Lindop|first=Samantha|year=2015|doi=10.1057/9781137503596|isbn=978-1-137-50359-6|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=London}}</ref> The co-dependency in the relationship between Betty and Rita—which borders on outright obsession—has been compared to the female relationships in two similar films, [[Ingmar Bergman]]'s ''[[Persona (1966 film)|Persona]]'' (1966) and [[Robert Altman]]'s ''[[3 Women]]'' (1977), which also depict identities of vulnerable women that become tangled, interchanging and ultimately merged: "The female couples also mirror each other, with their mutual interactions conflating hero(ine) worship with same-sex desire."<ref name="Filippo74">Filippo (2013), 74.</ref> Lynch pays direct homage to ''Persona'' in the scene where Rita dons the blonde wig, styled exactly like Betty's own hair. Rita and Betty then gaze at each other in the mirror "drawing attention to their physical similarity, linking the sequence to theme of embrace, physical coupling and the idea of merging or doubling."<ref name=":1" /> Mirroring and doubles, which are prominent themes throughout the film, serve to further queer the form and content of the film.

Several theorists have accused Lynch of perpetuating [[LGBTQ stereotypes|stereotypes and clichés of lesbians, bisexuals and lesbian relationships]]. Rita (the ''[[femme fatale]]'') and Betty (the school girl) represent two classic stock lesbian characters; Heather Love identifies two key clichés used in the film: "Lynch presents lesbianism in its innocent and expansive form: lesbian desire appears as one big adventure, an entrée into a glamorous and unknown territory."<ref name="love">{{cite journal | last1 = Love | first1 = Heather | year = 2004| title = Spectacular failure: the figure of the lesbian in ''Mulholland Drive'' | journal = New Literary History | volume =35| pages =117–132| doi = 10.1353/nlh.2004.0021 | s2cid = 144210949 }}</ref> Simultaneously, he presents the tragic lesbian triangle, "in which an attractive but unavailable woman dumps a less attractive woman who is figured as exclusively lesbian," perpetuating the stereotype of the [[Bisexuality|bisexual]] "ending up with a man."<ref name="love" /> Maria San Filippo recognizes that Lynch relies on classic film noir archetypes to develop Camilla's eventual betrayal: these archetypes "become ingrained to such a degree that viewers are immediately cued that 'Rita' is not what she seems and that it is only a matter of time before she reveals her duplicitous nature."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Filippo|first=Maria San|date=2007|title=The 'Other' Dreamgirl: Female Bisexuality As the 'Dark Secret' of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001)|journal=Journal of Bisexuality|volume=7|issue=1–2|pages=13–49|language=en|doi=10.1300/J159v07n01_03|s2cid=145648137}}</ref> For Love, Diane's exclusively lesbian desire is "between success and failure, between sexiness and abjection, even between life and death" if she is rejected.<ref name="love" /> In this context the character of Diane may be interpreted as the "tragic lesbian" cliché pining after the bisexual in the [[Heterosexuality|heterosexual]] relationship. Love's analysis of the film notes the media's peculiar response to the film's lesbian content: "reviewers rhapsodized in particular and at length about the film's sex scenes, as if there were a contest to see who could enjoy this representation of female same-sex desire the most."<ref name="love" /> She points out that the film used a classic theme in literature and film depicting lesbian relationships: Camilla as achingly beautiful and available, rejecting Diane for Adam. Popular reaction to the film suggests the contrasting relationships between Betty and Rita and Diane and Camilla are "understood as both the hottest thing on earth and, at the same time, as something fundamentally sad and not at all erotic" as "the heterosexual order asserts itself with crushing effects for the abandoned woman."<ref name="love" />

Heterosexuality as primary is important in the latter half of the film, as the ultimate demise of Diane and Camilla's relationship springs from the matrimony of the heterosexual couple. At Adam's party, they begin to announce that Camilla and Adam are getting married; through laughs and kisses, the declaration is delayed because it is obvious and expected. The heterosexual closure of the scene is interrupted by a scene change. As Lee Wallace suggests, by planning a hit against Camilla, "Diane circumvents the heterosexual closure of the industry story but only by going over to its storyworld, an act that proves fatal for both women, the cause and effect relations of the thriller being fundamentally incompatible with the plot of lesbianism as the film presents it."<ref name=":0" />

Media portrayals of Naomi Watts's and Laura Elena Harring's views of their onscreen relationships were varied and conflicting. Watts said of the filming of the scene, "I don't see it as erotic, though maybe it plays that way. The last time I saw it, I actually had tears in my eyes because I knew where the story was going. It broke my heart a little bit."<ref>[[Dennis Hensley]], "Lust Highway," in ''[[Total Film]]'' 61 (February 2002): 72–74.</ref> However, in another interview Watts stated, "I was amazed how honest and real all this looks on screen. These girls look really in love and it was curiously erotic."<ref name="pearce" /> While Harring was quoted saying, "The love scene just happened in my eyes. Rita's very grateful for the help Betty's given [her] so I'm saying goodbye and goodnight to her, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I kiss her and then there's just an energy that takes us [over]. Of course, I have amnesia so I don't know if I've done it before, but I don't think we're really lesbians."<ref name="ferber">Lawrence Ferber, "Sapphic Strangeness," in ''Watermark'', October 11, 2001, 31.</ref> Heather Love agreed somewhat with Harring's perception when she stated that identity in ''Mulholland Drive'' is not as important as desire: "who we are does not count for much—what matters instead is what we are about to do, what we want to do."<ref name="love" />