Dir: David Lynch
Star: Laura Dern, Karolina Gruszka, Krzysztof Majchrzak, Nastassja Kinski

It says a great deal about Inland Empire, that this 75-minute selection of deleted scenes is no less coherent, and perhaps also works better than the feature from which they were removed. It probably helps that I went in with absolutely no expectation of these “making sense”. But, while there is no real narrative, they certainly share a common look and feel, Lynch having edited them together into a single item that manages to generate a significant amount of unsettling atmosphere. This is mainly due to a disturbing feeling of misogynistic violence bubbling just beneath the surface, close to breaking through at any point.

This is particularly apparent in the first two scenes. The opening one sees the pregnant Sue (Dern) at home. Her husband arrives home, and berates her for the untidy state of the house, as well as for her claim that she’s getting “more pregnant.” The second opens with some seriously intense staring, before settling down into a dialogue between the characters known as the “Lost Girl” (Gruszka) and the “Phantom” (Majchrzak). The latter offers to sell the former a timepiece which will bring good luck, and also to look over her. The price will be $25, and holding his hand for a moment. The way in which this is filmed is particularly unsettling, almost entirely in close-up, which leaves the viewer with no way to escape its intensity.

At least there is actually Kinski to be found here – unlike the main feature, where her presence is at the “Processed in a facility that also handles” volume i.e. negligible. She is sitting with Nikki – the film actress played by Dern – and relates the story of an incident which happened to her in a bar. She meets a married man, and goes back to his hotel room. She calls the man Billy: this is likely a reference to the character by the same name, whose character in the film on which Nikki is working, has an affair with Nikki’s character. Yeah, if this seems excessively complicated… that’s because it is, an almost inevitable result of the multiple levels of reality with which the film plays. Like the rest of these deleted scenes, it doesn’t so much clarify anything, as obscure it further.

I read a theory that it’s actually her character recounting, from a different  the opening scene of the film, in which a Polish prostitute goes into a hotel room with her client, which may explains the growing expression of terror on Nikki’s face. Though without any idea of where this deleted scene was intended to go in Inland Empire, it is particularly hard to be sure of its significance. Here’s a transcription of her soliloquy:

I had the most incredible experience. It all started at Al’s. I was sitting at the bar; you know at the back, where the bathrooms are? And there was this guy. He turned around and looked at me and I just lit up inside, you know? He asked me if I wanted a beer and I said, I said, “Yeah, okay, thank you.” And, um, I noticed he was… he had a ring. He was married, but I didn’t care. And then he said he was just passing through and, um, he asked me my name and I told him. And he said his name was Billy. And he said, “Nice to meet you,”and I said, “Nice to meet you, Billy.”And Pete was in the back serving a beer to Sandra and uh, I don’t know, it was like he suddenly, like, he said, um, “I think I’ve met you before.”And I’m like, not falling for that line, you know? But now I said, “I think I’ve met you before.”
 
And I don’t… I thought I met him before but I don’t even remember where. And then he suddenly he said, like, I wanted him so bad, I don’t know, I was just and I felt he felt the same thing, you know? And then he said, “I want you.”And I said, “Where do you want to go?”And he said he was staying at the hotel. And I said, “At the Harriston?”and he said yeah. And so we were… we just left. And Pete was looking at me like [sighs]and Sandra was eyeballing this man I was leaving with. And then we got to the hotel and I was kind of hanging back in the dark while he was getting his key. Everything wasit was different; we went through the hallway and I didn’t know where I was. Think they must have changed the decor or something. Everything was different, I didn’t recognize any of it. I didn’t know where I was. It was like I was dreaming.

It’s a relatively short scene: Nastassja is present for not much more than four minutes, before the film drifts away into another of its multiverses. Yet it’s still fun to watch; she does a lot of that “peering sideways from under her fringe” thing, which I’ve always found one of her more adorable looks. It’s certainly preferable to the ten minutes of Los Angeles street hookers’ bickering, with which More Things ends. Like most of the feature from which it was excised, it’s very much a case of more being less. Overall, I can’t argue with Lynch, who explained this film thus: “There are things in More Things That Happened that give a feeling that could be like a brother or sister to the film. It’s like if you know a family but you haven’t met the sister yet, you go over to Ohio and meet the sister and it adds more to the feeling of the whole family.”

However, it’s still not a family with whom I want to spent any time.