Twin Peaks

From AwardAnnals

Reviews

Amazon.com

Alternately fascinating and frustrating—and no doubt deliberately so on both counts—this controversial Twin Peaks installment (it was roundly booed by mystified audiences at the Cannes Film Festival) appeared in theaters after the series was canceled, serving as both prequel and coda to the whole remarkable Twin Peaks phenomenon. Designed especially for dedicated followers of the series (it would just bewilder anyone else), Fire Walk with Me further investigates the murder of Laura Palmer by exploring events that took place before the series’s brilliant debut feature (Twin Peaks: The Premiere), up to and including the long, dark, terrible night of Laura’s death. Familiar Twin Peaks denizens Sheryl Lee, Grace Zabriskie, and Ray Wise (as the three members of the Palmer family), Kyle MacLachlan, Peggy Lipton, James Marshall, Dana Ashbrook, Miguel Ferrer, Mädchen Amick, and director David Lynch himself reprise their series roles (with Moira Kelly subbing for Lara Flynn Boyle as Donna Hayward), joined by an equally motley group of guest stars, including Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie, Chris Isaak, and Kiefer Sutherland. —Jim Emerson

Barnes and Noble

The banal and the bizarre are exquisitely intertwined in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, David Lynch’s prequel to his groundbreaking TV serial, Twin Peaks. Darker and more violent than its TV predecessor, Fire Walk with Me follows the last days of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), a small-town Oregon high school student whose murder—and its subsequent investigation—provided the main tension in the TV series. The film reprises a number of main characters from the show, including FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), whose offbeat good-guy persona bound the series together. But Fire Walk with Me is ultimately Laura Palmer’s story, and Lee gives a riveting performance as a teen torn between innocence and lust who is victimized by a mysterious sexual abuser. A plethora of eccentric characters swirl around Palmer: Their similarly fractured psyches provide fodder for the director’s characteristic exploration of unspeakable secrets lurking beneath the mundane fabric of small-town life. Lynch’s outrageously strange vision, rife with dream symbols, is perfectly complemented by a haunting score from his regular musical collaborator, composer Angelo Badalamenti. The result is an intense, head-spinning psychological thriller—darkly sexual, breathtakingly enigmatic, and quintessentially Lynchian. Gregory Baird