--------"my point is that D/B's breakdown ought to viewed as the result of a loss of faith in both love and hate as effective routes to "the real"... her problem is that she can't think her way past the notion that "this (particular) girl" is the pole star (the "reality", in fact) by whose light she must orient herself... "

I definitely agree that Camilla serves as Diane's desideratum, but I think there are very real consequences.

-------"Diane/Betty loses faith in her ability to ever make anything "real" again--and once that happens, you are dead!"

Well, that and a gunshot.
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Dave Fiore:

the wonderment continues!

I like what you're saying here Charles...and yet, I resist!

I would call Rita/Camilla/the idea contained within the imperative "this is the girl" (and all referrents in fact!) Betty/Diane's (and paint-smeared-Adam's!) idolodulia (as opposed to her/his desideratum)...

I'm pulling this word from Calvin's Institutes...

While the whole world teems with these and similar delusions, and the fact is perfectly notorious, we, who have brought back the worship of the one God to the rule of his Word, we, who are blameless in this matter, and have purged our churches, not only of idolatry but of superstition also, are accused of violating the worship of God, because we have discarded the worship of images, that is, as we call it, idolatry, but as our adversaries will have it, idolodulia.

I think that Lynch--like Calvin--is saying...hey! there may be a referrent (God, for Calvin), but it is absolutely inacessible to you... and the heartbreakingly human dream of building some ultimate bridge across the gulf between the subject and the object will get you nowhere...

and the best bridges (i.e. those which appear most stable) are the surest routes to hell!

you want to put pressure on the tragedy of Diane's enraged decision to kill Camilla, in light of Betty's overwhelmingly beneficent love for Rita... I want to put pressure upon the idea that these emotions themselves are the tragedy ... you want to hold Diane accountable for her actions (and so do I)--and yet, it's hard to imagine how these events--in either of our accounts--can have played out any other way (does B/D have the power not to want to kill Camilla? does she have the power not to focus the sum total of her desire upon one ersatz sunstitute for the inacessible other?)

If we accept the Adam in Betty's dream as another aspect of the same desirer, I think we at least get a sense of what her other choice might have been, even if we cannot really imagine her making it (that's predestination my friend!)--to wit: Adam could have walked away from "his" film... he did not have to capitulate to the cowboy's (fate's?/biology's) demand... he could have chosen not to report back to the studio at all, and damn the consequences... or he could have chosen to follow Betty out of the audition room, instead of playing his assigned role (in effect, he plays Judas to his own Jesus, by betraying himself to the authorities through the instrumentality of a seemingly superfluous act of "identification")... if he had chosen disobedience, the result would have been an entirely different film!