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The Blue Rose is currently available for rental or purchase on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: George Baron

FEATURING: Olivia Scott Welch, George Baron, Danielle Bisutti, Nikko Austen Smith, Viola Odette Harlow

PLOT: Los Angeles detectives Lilly and Dalton investigate a savage murder and fall into a dream-laden conspiracy.

COMMENTS: It was unplanned, but I ended up waking from one surreal nightmare and immediately stumbled into another. (There’s a lesson to be learned here, perhaps, about the dangers of napping just before watching a David Lynch fan-film.) With his directorial debut, George Baron—not quite twenty years old—has planted his flag firmly in the murky grounds of dream-logic and accented reality, boldly avowing his love of all the flavors of Lynch: bright colors, dark secrets, stylized milieux, and muddled plot structures. Indeed, everything I’ve come to associate with the Montanan Mæstro is on display here, for better and worse, with even the the film’s name and recurring visual motif lifted from the mysterious gent from America’s mountain West. The first question to ask yourself before watching The Blue Rose is: do you like David Lynch movies?

Presuming the answer is in the vicinity of “yes”, do continue; but bear in mind that this is a debut, from an enthusiast, working more from his heart than his head. This is for the best, though; a coldly clinical take on the whole Lynchian thing would make for something both incomprehensible and tedious (as opposed to merely incomprehensible). I’m something of an idiot when it comes to interpreting this kind of thing, so I shall forego plot remarks in favor of a pithy description of the plot’s vibe: The Blue Rose story travels along the narrative line at the intersection of Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, with the gee-shucks young detectives (one of them, Dalton, played by George Baron—with none other than Ray Wise as papa detective) traveling a Twin Peaks-y inscape during the heady days of Wild At Heart-spun 1950s Los Angeles, with a subplot involving an Eraserhead–ful baby. There’s probably Lost Highway kicking around in there somewhere, but frankly, there’s a lot going on.

Which is good, because not everything going on here works, so that when you find yourself trapped in a scene or sub-story scenario, you can comfort yourself in the knowledge that sooner or later you will emerge into a new one, with everything tying up far more nicely than Inland Empire could ever dream of. The acting is uniformly uneven, but the two leads are generally on the mark; George Baron’s detective, in particular, has an interesting arc wherein he encounters an alternate, feminine, version of himself during an insane asylum art-installation human showcase. And such—among many—cruel machinations give the cinematography a chance to shine: although the action on-screen is tedious on occasion, the props, costumes, and color-schemes always demand attention.

And speaking of attention, I am interested where this kid (if you’ll pardon my old-man speak) ends up going after this. With a little luck, he’ll find his own path to pursue, as it’s already clear he knows the nuts-and-bolts of filmmaking. But, even if he merely refines his Lynch-pirations, retreading the ground already walked by the auteur, it would be no bad thing to have a younger storyteller on-hand to continue that particular tradition.

So, Mr Baron, hopefully we’ll see you when next we dream in blue.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…not for all tastes (it’s Lynchian-like weird)... mostly effective as an unconventional visionary film on Hollyweird. It delves into its narrative with the Lynchian Blue Velvet touch for dealing with mysteries, as it takes us down a nightmare-like scenario with only a few stumbles.”–Dennis Schwartz, Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews (festival screening)