Darkened Room
In the first half of the film, a Japanese woman shows us her apartment in Tokyo and muses on the amount of bananas produced worldwide.[3] It has been suggested that Darkened Room served as an inspiration for several motifs in Inland Empire, 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 speech acts to construct identity, particularly through the interactions between the two female characters, drawing connections between Darkened Room and Lynch’s later works, such as Inland Empire and noting shared elements like the use of confined spaces to symbolize psychological entrapment and the layering of narrative realities.