A twisted drive.

Mulholland Drive * Written and directed by David Lynch * Starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller * Universal

I once had occasion to ask David Lynch if he had ever tried psychoanalysis. He said that he went to see one once, sat down, and asked the doctor if the process could affect his creativity. When the doctor responded that, in all honesty, it could, he got up and left, Lynch added, "If it's not really broken, don't fix it."

We should be grateful that Lynch turned his back on the shrink. When his stuff really cooks, as Blue Velvet, the TV series Twin Peaks, and the underrated Lost Highway did, it has the volcanic energy of a headful of dreams ready to burst from the cumulative pressure of neglect. It is the very open-endedness of his nightmare imagery, the reluctance to comprehend or explain away, that makes Lynch's vision so compulsively alluring.

Having worked through a thing for lawn mowers with The Straight Story, Lynch has returned to the shadowy sideshow of dreams and desire that make him the greatest impresario of the id since Hitchcock. The noirish Mulholland Drive may well be tagged The Gay Story, as much for the citrusy camp energy of former MGM star Ann Miller in a supporting role as for the teasingly delayed erotic dance shared by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring in the leads.

Mulholland Drive's bewitchingly complex plot kicks in with a car crash, but it is the collision of personalities played out by Watts and Harring that gives the film its oozy momentum. Watts plays Betty Elms, an aspiring young actress who arrives in Los Angeles with a burst of Doris Day innocence as pure and hopeful as her hick-town name. Harring is a sultry, sad question mark of a woman who has suffered amnesia in a limo crash, stumbling into Betty's place with a bagful of cash but not a clue who she is or how she came upon it. Spying a poster of Gilda on the wall, she names herself after its redheaded femme fatale, Rita Hayworth.

Lynch stealthily subverts our early impressions of each of them. Like some overripe Nancy Drew, Betty cheerfully embraces the task of helping Rita uncover her past, a creepy bit of detective work that leads them to a rotting corpse in a bungalow and a ghostly all-night theater where would-be divas lip-synch spellbinding Spanish love songs.

The Rita-Betty scenario dovetails and eventually intersects with the travails of Adam (Justin Theroux), an impulsive film director who is being strong-armed by thuggish producers to cast a female lead against his will. Adam, who many will pounce upon as Lynch's alter ego (I personally think it's Betty), runs afoul of a hilariously sinister cowboy with Nobel-worthy powers of persuasion.

I wish I could feel better about the lesbian element that Lynch works into the mix at the eleventh hour. As in Robert Altman's Dr. T and the Women, it's held back for surprise value, as if homosexuality were one more poltergeist that springs out at you in the big fun house of life. While it's nice to see all these straight directors (even Kevin Smith) tackling lesbian couplings with such candor, their attentions have the gaping quality of a bunch of horny boys who want to see girls do it. The day they can utilize gay male characters with the same vitality is the day I will celebrate. Something is behind David Lynch's ongoing devotion to Kyle MacLachlan, But without therapy, we'll never know.

Stuart is the film critic for Newsday.