Blue Velvet

Written and directed by David Lynch, this is possibly the only coming-of-age movie in which sex has the danger and the heightened excitement of a horror picture. The charged erotic atmosphere makes the film something of a hallucination, but Lynch’s humor keeps breaking through, too. His fantasies may come from his unconscious, but he recognizes them for what they are, and he’s tickled by them. The film is consciously purplish and consciously funny, and the two work together in an original, down-home way. The setting is an archetypal small, sleepy city in an indefinite mythic present that feels like the past, and Kyle MacLachlan is Jeffrey, a clean-cut young man who’s scared of his dirty thoughts (but wants to have them anyway). He commutes between the blue lady of the night (Isabella Rossellini, who’s a dream of a freak) and the sunshine girl he loves (Laura Dern). The movie’s aural-visual humor and poetry are sustained despite the wobbly plot and other weaknesses. Lynch’s use of irrational material works the way it’s supposed to: we read his images at some not fully conscious level. With Dennis Hopper, who gives the movie a jolt of horrific energy, and Dean Stockwell, who is a smiling wonder as Ben the Sandman. Released in 1986.(Museum of the Moving Image; March 21-22)