''Darkened Room'' is an 8-minute film directed by

David Lynch David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 16, 2025) was an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and actor. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Lynch was often called a "visionary" and received acclaim f ...

. It first appeared on Lynch's website, ''DavidLynch.com'', in

2002 The effects of the September 11 attacks of the previous year had a significant impact on the affairs of 2002. The war on terror was a major political focus. Without settled international law, several nations engaged in anti-terror operation ...

. It has subsequently been released on the DVD anthology ''Dynamic:01''.

Premise

In the first half of the film, a Japanese woman shows us her apartment in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

and muses on the amount of

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

s produced worldwide. The woman then tells us that her friend next door is sad. In the second half, a blonde woman ( Jordan Ladd) sits on a sofa and cries. Then a brunette woman ( Cerina Vincent) enters and says cruel things to her, before threatening to tell her the truth. The film ends with a fade to black.

Cast

* Jordan Ladd as Girl #1 * Etsuko Shikata as Herself * Cerina Vincent as Girl #2

Production

The film was shot on digital video. In an introduction that appears on the ''Dynamic:01'' DVD, Lynch calls the film "an experiment based on some idea", and says the film "was always some kind of tie in to bananas, information concerning bananas, so we can all learn some things as we enjoy the shows". Lynch then laughs.

Analysis

The film has been compared to other Lynch productions for the prominence of the act of crying and the presence of a lost girl. It has been suggested that Darkened Room served as an inspiration for several motifs in

Inland Empire The Inland Empire (commonly abbreviated as the IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County and Or ...

, including the "Lost Girl" figure, who represents entrapment and narrative disconnection. Key visual and thematic elements, such as the cigarette-burn hole in a silk slip and the symbolic significance of a watch, are echoed in the later film, linking the two works stylistically and narratively. Additionally, actress Jordan Ladd, who played the blonde woman in Darkened Room, appeared in Inland Empire as Terri, one of the Valley Girls, further connecting the two films. Šekrst argues that the short film uses

performative In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing. In a 1955 lecture series, later published as ''How to D ...

speech act In the philosophy of language and linguistics, a speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the mashed potatoes; could you please pas ...

s to construct identity, particularly through the interactions between the two female characters, drawing connections between Darkened Room and Lynch’s later works, such as

and noting shared elements like the use of confined spaces to symbolize psychological entrapment and the layering of

narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller ...

realities.

References

External links

Davidlynch.com
* 2002 films Short films directed by David Lynch American independent films 2000s English-language films 2002 short films Films with screenplays by David Lynch 2002 independent films 2000s American films American avant-garde and experimental short films 2000s avant-garde and experimental films English-language independent films English-language short films {{short-film-stub