For many Blue Velvet is David Lynchs masterpiece. It represents a unique act of cinema an 80s Hollywood studio film as radical visionary and cabalistic as anything found in the avantgarde a mysteriously symbolic and subterranean cult movie that nevertheless has recognisable stars and was broadly distributed a genre piece with the ambience of a fearsome hypercomposed nightmare an American art film by Hollywoods only reputable art film director. Michael Atkinsons intricate and layered reading of