Such has been the case for Lynch since he reached his peak in Velvet, more than a decade ago. Except for the occasional inspired moment in Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, his few films since then have been paralyzed by the compulsion to be meaningful. There's no such problem with the wildly oneiric, no-holds-barred psychosis of Lost Highway, a film whose utter expressionistic confidence and infuriating refusal to come to any resolution is bound to alienate as many people as it enthralls. In my opinion, it's the most powerful evocation on film of the dissolution of sanity and identity since, back in 1969, Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammel collaborated on the neglected Performance, an exuberant tour of the dark side where the fact that things don't make sense is exactly the point.

Madness in Lost Highway actually looks a lot like MTV. In the opening credit sequence, the broken yellow lines of a highway rush out of the night toward the camera like flames as David Bowie's "I'm Deranged" surges on the soundtrack. The first of many fades to black is illuminated by well-to-do sax player Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) as he draws on a cigarette. The doorbell rings and an ominous voice intones over the intercom, "Dick Laurent is dead."

This is just the first of many assaults on Fred's privacy; it's followed by the delivery of videotapes showing himself and his raven-haired wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette), sleeping together -- tapes that trigger the maddening suspicion Renee may be stepping out on him. Fred's doubts about his wife culminate in doubts about himself brought on at a decadent Hollywood party in which an eerie stranger, "The Mystery Man," asks him whether he remembers their meeting.

Played by a Robert Blake nearly unrecognizable behind shaved eyebrows, white face, and make-up, the Mystery Man looks like a cross between Rumpelstiltskin and the Dean Stockwell character in Blue Velvet, and when he hands Fred a cellular phone and asks him to call home, the comforting verities of common sense melt away. It's almost a relief when Fred finds himself on death row for murdering his wife and, in an ecstatic vision of screaming strangers and a reverse explosion, is inexplicably replaced in his cell by the bewildered young mechanic Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty). Released, Pete gets into troubles of his own with Alice, Renee's blonde double (Arquette again), the scheming moll of nefarious mob kingpin Mr. Eddie (Robert Loggia).

A certain id-like logic is at work here, involving doubles, symmetries, and the inevitable devastation of the universal quest. Interpretation fades into insignificance as Lynch -- using ruthless and diabolical images, editing, music, and sound -- re-creates the excruciating and irresistible nightmare of derangement and ineffable revelation.

In search of a bathroom after committing a heinous deed for Alice, Pete walks up a flight of stairs that turns into a motel hallway ignited by red light and reverberating with the cerebrum-busting strains of Marilyn Manson's "Apple of Sodom." He opens door number #26 and beholds . . . Or in a scene reminiscent of Dennis Hopper's "I'm gonna fuck everything that moves!" moment in Blue Velvet, he and Alice writhe in the desert night under headlight beams in what has been justly described as the best sex scene of the year. Who should emerge from the embrace but . . . ?

At times Lynch strains for a laugh: the sequence in which Mr. Eddie teaches a tailgater the rules of the road is funny, but it's sad to see Lynch steal riffs off Quentin Tarantino. Worse is the way he sometimes strains for significance; there's a fine line between absurdity and portentousness, between the enigmatic and the sophomoric, and Lynch is too exuberant not to stray. No matter -- Lost Highway may lead nowhere, but getting there is all the fun.