Lady Blue Shanghai

Remember the recent news that David Lynch helmed a short film for Christian Dior's current ad campaign? Following in the footsteps of Olivier Dahan and Annie Leibovitz, the filmmaker wrote a poem about Shanghai and morphed it into this brief, bag-centric tale where Marion Cotillard visits the city for the first time and has a strange encounter with a man, a hand bag, and a blue flower. The film has now hit Dior's website, and you can check it out after the jump.

Lady Bleu is classic Lynch thriving in deep reds and rich blues, with an eerie vibrating score (it sounds like classic Angelo Badalamenti, but it's Lynch with Dean Hurley), strange characters, and timelessness resulting from a mixture of old and new. Of course, without the omg look at this bag! focus, the film would be even better, as even Lynch can't make the product placement look like anything other than product placement. In fact, it almost seems as if Lynch envisioned the film with just a flower, but then threw the bag in there when Dior came a-calling.

What's most interesting, however, is how the film embodies Lynch's style without delving into the terror usually present in his art. It is, for sure, eerie and subtly thrilling, but it doesn't fall into darkness, shrieks, and mayhem. One has to wonder if the filmmaker's commitment to transcendental meditation has finally made its way into his art. While Lynch often raves about how TM is a dive into bliss, his art rarely features such, well, bliss. Save for the sweetness of The Straight Story, there's always darkness and emotional turmoil. This film takes that darkness and gives it a sweet result.

Do you think it will continue in his future work, or did Dior just want Lynch without the terror?