Inland Empire Synopsis & Summary

Cinema of the surreal icon David Lynch follows up the success of his critically acclaimed 2001 feature Mulholland Drive with this dark mystery, shot on a handheld Sony PD150 digital video recorder. It is the tale of an actress whose personality becomes increasingly fragmented as she delves ever deeper into her work for a high-profile filmmaker. Kingsley (Jeremy Irons) is a director looking to adapt for the screen a Polish gypsy folktale that was previously stalled when the two leads were viciously murdered. Having offered the female lead to devoted actress Nikki (Laura Dern), Kingsley warns her male co-star, Devon (Justin Theroux), to maintain his professional distance, as Nikki's husband (Peter J. Lucas) is known to be notoriously possessive. As the passionate co-stars quickly cross the line and become lovers, Nikki's slowly slipping sense of reality causes her to eventually become lost in her character while the mysterious story of a Polish couple unfurls, and a trio of giant stage-bound rabbits (voices of Naomi Watts, Scott Coffey, and Laura Harring) lounge around on the sofa and tend to their domestic duties. Shot over the course of two and a half years and without a formalized script, Lynch's hallucinogenic look at a doomed film project features all of the abstract imagery and strange symbolism that have long made the director a favorite of film fans who embrace his disorienting approach to unconventional storytelling. - Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide