Blue Velvet has been blowing the minds of art students since 1986. But deservedly so.
Starring young Kyle MacLachlan as college student Jeffrey Beaumont, Blue Velvet acts as a thesis to the rest of David Lynch’s catalog — work that explores the blinking neon fractures of America’s suburbs, damn fine coffee and smoke-laced absurdism. Clean-cut Beaumont returns to his hometown after his father has a stroke. When he discovers a severed ear, a mystery unravels.
Alongside Sandy Williams (Laura Dern) he sets off to solve the case, believing that lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) is involved. But Beaumont becomes ensnared deeper into a dark underbelly entwined with lust, wisps of cigarette smoke and sultry Jazz music. The classic is being screened as part of the “Essential Viewing Series” by the UC Center for Film and Media Studies.
7 p.m. Wednesday. $7.50-$10. Esquire Theatre, 320 Ludlow Ave., Clifton, esquiretheatre.com.
This article appears in Oct 3-10, 2018.
