Lost Highway movie review & film summary (1997)
It opens with two nervous people living in a cold, threatening house. They hate or fear each other, we sense. "You don't mind if I don't go to the club tonight?'' says the wife (Patricia Arquette). She wants to stay home and read. "Read? Read?'' he chuckles bitterly. We cut to a scene that feels inspired by a 1940s 'noir' ("Detour" maybe), showing the husband (Bill Pullman) as a crazy hep-cat sax player. Cut back home. Next morning. An envelope is found on their steps. Inside, a videotape of their house (which, architecturally, resembles an old IBM punch card).
More tapes arrive, including one showing the wife's murdered body in bed. They go to a party and meet a disturbing little man with a white clown face (Robert Blake), who ingratiatingly tells Pullman, "We met at your house. As a matter of fact, I'm there right now. Call me.'' He does seem to be at both ends of the line. That mirrors another nice touch in the film, which is that Pullman seems able to talk to himself over a doorbell speaker phone.
Can people be in two places at once? Why not? (Warning: plot point coming up.) Halfway through the film, Pullman is arrested for the murder of his wife and locked in solitary confinement. One morning his guard looks in the cell door, and--good God! It's not the same man inside! Now it's a teenager (Balthazar Getty). The prison officials can't explain how bodies could be switched in a locked cell, but have no reason to hold the kid. He's released, and gets his old job at the garage.
A gangster (Robert Loggia) comes in with his mistress, who is played by Patricia Arquette. Is this the same person as the murdered wife? Was the wife really murdered? Hello? The story now focuses on the relationship between Getty and Loggia, a ruthless but ingratiating man who, in a scene of chilling comic violence, pursues a tailgater and beats him senseless ("Tailgating is one thing I can't tolerate''). Arquette comes to the garage to pick up the kid ("Why don't you take me to dinner?'') and tells him a story of sexual brutality involving Loggia, who is connected to a man who makes porno films. This requires a scene where Arquette is forced to disrobe at gunpoint and stand naked in a roomful of strange men--an echo of Isabella Rossellini's humiliation in Lynch's "Blue Velvet".
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