Blue Velvet — Michael Atkinson

For many, Blue Velvet is David Lynch's masterpiece. It crystallises many of his chief preoccupations: the evil and violence underlying the surface of suburbia, the seedy by-ways of sexuality, the frightening appearance of the adult world to a child's eyes. In this intricate and layered reading of the film, Michael Atkinson analyses Blue Velvet as the definitive expression of the traumatized innocence which characterizes Lynch's work.