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The movie is comprised of a dream, flashbacks, scenes to be interpreted as “real,” imaginations, hallucinations, and metaphoric/symbolic representations.
Diane grew up in Canada and her parents were not in the picture. Her grandfather molested her at some point when she was growing up. As is common in many instances of child abuse she was blamed for it and the issue was buried like it never happened when her grandmother found out.
She went to Hollywood in search of stardom with money inherited from her aunt, who had some sort of success in showbiz but died before Diane could connect with her.
She met an actress named Camila who she became very close with, most likely they had a sexual relationship. Camila was seductive, she would sleep around with directors and producers and found more success than Diane, eventually Camila started manipulating Diane, literally pimping her to directors and producers to further her career while Diane got scrap parts but not enough to make it.
Diane was so far from her wholesome dream of stardom, her self-esteem was in shambles, she had to resort to working at Winkie’s and engaging in prostitution, then Camila starts distancing herself and breaks up with her at some point.
This is devastating to Diane, later after the breakup she reluctantly accepts an invitation to a party where Camila again uses her as an “extra” to bolster her image and breaks Diane’s heart when she announces her engagement with the young Hollywood hotshot Adam and right after that she kisses a different female actor on the lips as if to torment her again.
Diane’s dark aspect of her psyche emerges and she hires a hitman to kill Camilla. The hitman instructs her that when she receives a blue key it means the work has been done.
Diane’s mental breakdown is worsening in the aftermath of the murder having taken place.
In this headspace is where the movie starts:
The jitterbug scene in the beginning is a memory warped by imagination perhaps experienced under the influence of drugs, the psychedelic collage differentiates it from a flashback or dream.
In it she reminisces an idealization of the time in which she won a dancing contest that impulsed her dream of going to Hollywood and transcending to a beautiful fantasy world where she will escape from her demons.
When she pictures herself walking up to the front stage the image is clear, but the image of her grandparents snugging and basking in the victory is blurry and out of focus because even though she tries to see them under a loving light the trauma will always be there.
She descends on her pillow and the subsequent and largest chapter of the movie is a dream.
In the dream a lot of the characters represent a part of her own psyche in some level, and everything that happens is her mind’s representation of her subjectivity:
-My parents are upstairs, I’ll could tell my dad!
-But you won’t
-You’re playing a dangerous game, if you’re trying to blackmail me it’s not going to work, get out before I tell my dad, he trusts you.
-What will he think of you?
-Stop it, that’s what you said from the beginning. If I them what happened they’ll arrest you and put you in jail. Get out of here.
-Before what?
-Before I kill you.
-Then they’ll put you in jail.
-I hate you. I hate us both”
This shows the sexual trauma in her psyche that makes her deal with having felt these terrible emotions that poison her soul and the festering darkness that results in a murderous impulse that lashes out.
When Adam drives away from Hollywood because they’re taking away his creative freedom he heads home and finds his wife cheating in the dream and he gets blamed for it, so it’s like the part of Diane that is trying to take control of her path but if she wants to leave Hollywood and revert to her old life what she has there is emotional trauma. Of being blamed for a sexual transgression where she was the victim.
When they go to the “Club Silencio” I think the magician’s act is representative that she is being shown the illusion of her waking reality and her dreaming reality, her childhood trauma is brought to the fore when the blue light starts strobing and there is a sound of thunder along with some female gasps and a male grunt, that’s when she starts shaking uncontrollably due to the intensity of her repressed memories. “Club Silencio” can be referent to the family’s silencing of her regarding the abuse.
Also I think the lady with blue hair could be symbolic of Lincoln’s assassination in a theater’s booth, reminding her that Camila’s assassination didn’t fail like how she’s wanting to dream it, what with the hitman in her dream having a series of flubs after he kills the guy with the “little back book” symbolic of all the Hollywood prostitutes that she formed part of.
In the last part of the movie Diane has woken up from the dream, returns to the shattered headspace in her dingy apartment wearing her shabby clothes, has flashbacks to her breakup with Camila, the catastrophic diner among successful movie figures (when Camila takes her up there via “a secret path” it’s symbolic of sexual career shortcuts), her hiring the hitman….
And finally transitions to a metaphorical/symbolic/(metaphysical?) scene where we go back to the alley behind Winkie’s where we see slow flashes of red light which through the movie are symbolic of prostitution
and then we turn the corner to face the demon-hobo who puts the blue box that probably holds the repressed trauma in a bag and sets it down, the miniaturized and unhinged grandparents set loose from it and sneak into her apartment where they terrorize Diane and she shoots herself.
This last part seems like it might be a hallucination, but even after she shoots herself there is still smoke stacks going off in the room which do not correspond to a realistic event. So it could be a metaphorical representation of what happened. Not really sure what to classify it as ontologically. I guess this part is very open to personal interpretation.
Anyways there’s a lot to analyze but the most concealed and important secrets I believe are that she got abused and she was a hooka!
Diane grew up in Canada and her parents were not in the picture. Her grandfather molested her at some point when she was growing up. As is common in many instances of child abuse she was blamed for it and the issue was buried like it never happened when her grandmother found out.
She went to Hollywood in search of stardom with money inherited from her aunt, who had some sort of success in showbiz but died before Diane could connect with her.
She met an actress named Camila who she became very close with, most likely they had a sexual relationship. Camila was seductive, she would sleep around with directors and producers and found more success than Diane, eventually Camila started manipulating Diane, literally pimping her to directors and producers to further her career while Diane got scrap parts but not enough to make it.
Diane was so far from her wholesome dream of stardom, her self-esteem was in shambles, she had to resort to working at Winkie’s and engaging in prostitution, then Camila starts distancing herself and breaks up with her at some point.
This is devastating to Diane, later after the breakup she reluctantly accepts an invitation to a party where Camila again uses her as an “extra” to bolster her image and breaks Diane’s heart when she announces her engagement with the young Hollywood hotshot Adam and right after that she kisses a different female actor on the lips as if to torment her again.
Diane’s dark aspect of her psyche emerges and she hires a hitman to kill Camilla. The hitman instructs her that when she receives a blue key it means the work has been done.
Diane’s mental breakdown is worsening in the aftermath of the murder having taken place.
In this headspace is where the movie starts:
The jitterbug scene in the beginning is a memory warped by imagination perhaps experienced under the influence of drugs, the psychedelic collage differentiates it from a flashback or dream.
In it she reminisces an idealization of the time in which she won a dancing contest that impulsed her dream of going to Hollywood and transcending to a beautiful fantasy world where she will escape from her demons.
When she pictures herself walking up to the front stage the image is clear, but the image of her grandparents snugging and basking in the victory is blurry and out of focus because even though she tries to see them under a loving light the trauma will always be there.
She descends on her pillow and the subsequent and largest chapter of the movie is a dream.
In the dream a lot of the characters represent a part of her own psyche in some level, and everything that happens is her mind’s representation of her subjectivity:
- Betty in her pink tiny sweater is her innocent side, has a rosy outlook and naive hope to be a movie star.
- Rita is the sexual side of her that she would emulate after Camila once she got to Hollywood and befriended her, seeing her finding success by sleeping around with directors and producers.
- Adam is the part of her that tries to take control of her situation, but faces external obstacles
- Dan in the Winkie’s is the side of her that felt fearful of “the man in the back”
- “The Man In The Back” is a rotten hobo that represents the dark part of her psyche that lies in her subconscious a.k.a the back of her mind (in fact the character is played by a woman and doesn’t really look like a man), a dejected persona with no self-esteem that resides in ruination
- The Aunt represents the motherly figure which she longs to connect with, but in her dream they never get to meet because in real life she is dead
- Coco represents a naive idea of old Hollywood glamour, and as well as a protective motherly figure that has roots in showbiz.
- In the dream there are people looking to kill Rita because those are the parts of her psyche that feel like Diane’s problems all come from having met her.
- In the dream her grandparents are presented as an old couple she just met, were warm to her, and sent her off to Hollywood with their best wishes. She’s preserving the image of paternal affection she wants to have of them while also creating distance between them. But their sinister side is latent and can be seen when they are driving away grinning creepily, happy to have her go away and maybe find success that they can leech off from, continuing the exploitation.
- The prostitue that the hitman has an interaction with has short blonde hair like her in real life, it’s an allusion to her involvement in sex for money or favors
-My parents are upstairs, I’ll could tell my dad!
-But you won’t
-You’re playing a dangerous game, if you’re trying to blackmail me it’s not going to work, get out before I tell my dad, he trusts you.
-What will he think of you?
-Stop it, that’s what you said from the beginning. If I them what happened they’ll arrest you and put you in jail. Get out of here.
-Before what?
-Before I kill you.
-Then they’ll put you in jail.
-I hate you. I hate us both”
This shows the sexual trauma in her psyche that makes her deal with having felt these terrible emotions that poison her soul and the festering darkness that results in a murderous impulse that lashes out.
When Adam drives away from Hollywood because they’re taking away his creative freedom he heads home and finds his wife cheating in the dream and he gets blamed for it, so it’s like the part of Diane that is trying to take control of her path but if she wants to leave Hollywood and revert to her old life what she has there is emotional trauma. Of being blamed for a sexual transgression where she was the victim.
When they go to the “Club Silencio” I think the magician’s act is representative that she is being shown the illusion of her waking reality and her dreaming reality, her childhood trauma is brought to the fore when the blue light starts strobing and there is a sound of thunder along with some female gasps and a male grunt, that’s when she starts shaking uncontrollably due to the intensity of her repressed memories. “Club Silencio” can be referent to the family’s silencing of her regarding the abuse.
Also I think the lady with blue hair could be symbolic of Lincoln’s assassination in a theater’s booth, reminding her that Camila’s assassination didn’t fail like how she’s wanting to dream it, what with the hitman in her dream having a series of flubs after he kills the guy with the “little back book” symbolic of all the Hollywood prostitutes that she formed part of.
In the last part of the movie Diane has woken up from the dream, returns to the shattered headspace in her dingy apartment wearing her shabby clothes, has flashbacks to her breakup with Camila, the catastrophic diner among successful movie figures (when Camila takes her up there via “a secret path” it’s symbolic of sexual career shortcuts), her hiring the hitman….
And finally transitions to a metaphorical/symbolic/(metaphysical?) scene where we go back to the alley behind Winkie’s where we see slow flashes of red light which through the movie are symbolic of prostitution
(Diane has a red lamp next to her phone, in the dream Mr. Rook calls a middleman, who in turn calls a guy in a dilapidated apartment with an important seeming phone, this guy is probably a pimp and he calls Diane’s phone but in the dream she doesn’t answer because she wants to turn her back to the griminess yet in reality there is a flashback where the caller was actually Camila which is how one can surmise she was the pimp)
This last part seems like it might be a hallucination, but even after she shoots herself there is still smoke stacks going off in the room which do not correspond to a realistic event. So it could be a metaphorical representation of what happened. Not really sure what to classify it as ontologically. I guess this part is very open to personal interpretation.
Anyways there’s a lot to analyze but the most concealed and important secrets I believe are that she got abused and she was a hooka!
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