David Lynch's films attract the viewer much like the cinematic equivalent of a Rubik's cube - the audience s forced to pt the film back together in their head from the fractured scenes and images they see. He has shown that simple story telling is something he can do very well in the aptly titled Straight Story and The Elephant Man, but his basic stance in a film is to subvert narrative and expectation so that  he showcases his films much as experiences rather than stories or fables. Inland Empire picks up from the twisted approach to narrative that was so important in both Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, and here the experimentation with different frames of representation far exceeds the binary twists in those films. In Inland Empire it is difficult to know whether what we see is dream, premonition, film, TV or nightmare, and quite often it is all of these things as the viewer is dragged under the surface of perspective after perspective after perspective.

That David Lynch has a distinctive an uncompromising vision is clear, but I have felt that on occasion his work has drifted close to kitsch or meaningless puzzles. He has always had a terrific sense of the banality of evil and a way with disconnection that is truly intriguing but I have found myself wondering if his movies are nothing more than elegant crosswords rather than pieces with something to say. Inland Empire is long, nearly three hours, shot on DV and about itself in a way that might seem a little pretentious. Laura Dern plays an actress who learns through a kind of vision that she will be offered an engrossing part in a film which has been cursed to blur the difference between fact and fiction. She travels through the artifice of film making through her own personal life, onto the life of her character and of other women whose fates she inhabits. The procession of images and scenes seem desperately incongruous and are further thrown into confusion by the bizarre integration of a family of anthromorphic rodents in a kind of sitcom throughout proceedings. The line between actress, character and dream is constantly crossed including a large section of the film spent inside the sets of the film she is making as if they are real. In the end, the dreams, the imagination and the reality, all of the layers of the film converge around her in a celebratory ending.

This is the most Felliniesque of Lynch's films with a playful self reflective tone and the only message which it provides is one about the equal joy of the real and the fantastic. It has a strongly improvised feel in the filming sub-plot which is served well by good ol' Harry Dean Stanton in a trademark weird turn, a satirical edge in the rodent sitcom, and a horrific anxiety about the scenes trapped in the set. There are some great moments of transformation including a wholly unexpected dance number and the photography and editing here is much rougher than previously in the director's work as he seeks a realistic edge to some sequences with shaky camera movements and naturalist lighting. I do feel the film drags a little in it's third hour but it is full of bravura ideas and images which will stay with you way beyond first viewing. It isn't novel in terms of ideas but it is more textured than his recent films and has a more compelling focus than his most recent films.

If you want weird, Inland Empire will help you out but there is a more mature interest here as well as Lynch attempts his most complex exploration of sensation and imagination. It is, as ever, intriguing if not entirely insightful.