Gordon speaks.

Gordon speaks through Lil.

"Break the code, solve the case." 
-- Agent Dale Cooper

Twin Peaks was conceived as a series in which (like The Fugitive before it) the central "mystery" (Who killed Laura Palmer? Who killed Dr. Richard Kimble's wife? And what of the one-armed man?) would spin off new complications, week after week, but would never really be solved -- at least (in the case of The Fugitive) until the end of the series. (I like to think of it as sort of the TV series version of Buñuel's Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, only instead of never allowing the characters to eat a meal, the series would just continually deny the audience and the characters a solution to the mystery.)  But soon (or eventually, depending on how you look at it), public and network pressure forced the hand of Twin Peaks co-creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, and they revealed Laura Palmer's murderer a few weeks into the second season.  Ratings, critical, and creative ennui set in shortly thereafter, but a year later Lynch released a feature film (hissed and booed at the Cannes Film Festival) that promised to go into explicit detail (certainly more so than you could do on network television in the early 1990s) about exactly what happened on the night Laura Palmer was murdered.

It was a typically perverse Lynch move -- belatedly rehashing details about a year-old, already-solved murder on a TV show that had been cancelled by the time the movie was released.  Even more perversely, Lynch and co-writer Robert Engels began this feature-film prequel with an absurdist prologue that -- in case you hadn't caught on by know -- pretty much explained the spirit, and method you should have invoked to watch Twin Peaks in the first place. (The film -- originally sub-titled Teresa Banks and the Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer -- was supposedly re-cut before release; Lynch's full script is available online here.)

Lynch himself reprises his role as FBI Bureau Chief Gordon Cole, standing in front of a woodsy photorealistic backdrop in his office that recalls the tropical mural used for trompe l'oeil effects at the house of Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) in the series.  Gordon, as you may recall, can't hear too well.  He is accustomed to communicating in other ways -- through signs, signals, symbols, omens, clues.  And he expects his agents to speak his language.

"I've got a surprise for you.  Something interesting I would like to show you," Gordon yells into the phone at Special Agent Chester Desmond (Chris Isaac).  When Desmond and Sam Stanley from Spokane (Kiefer Sutherland) ("Sam's the man who cracked the Whitman case") meet Gordon at the private Portland airport, they're treated to a peculiar, ritualistic display of body language by a woman in a reddish-orange dress with flaming hair to match.  Gordon introduces her as Lil, "my mother's sister's girl." Lil  makes faces, blinks, sashays around, and waddles away.

Afterwards, in the car, Sam asks the questions that all good Twin Peaks devotees are meant to ask again and again: "What exactly did that mean?"  And Desmond matter-of-factly ("I'll explain it to you") deciphers a bizarre series of signs and signals and symbols and omens and clues that Lil's little "dance" conveyed about the case they were about to embark upon.  

The details don't really matter much (a sour face indicates trouble with local authorities, one hand in her pocket suggests they're hiding something, walking in place means a lot of legwork, tailored dresses are code for drugs, etc.) -- it's the manner in which this info is coveyed that's important.  In its secret heart of hearts, Twin Peaks is an epistemological thriller about perception and the ways that we assemble information about the world around us (see Mystery Without End, Amen).  We humans may be capable of certain higher brain functions, but Lil's dance conveys information in a sophisticated, ritualized way that isn't that far evolved from, say, the dances of cranes.  In Twin Peaks, dreams and Tibetan rock-throwing rituals are just as vital and valid forms of detective work as forensic science.  Maybe more so.

Oh, and the most important sign was that Lil was  wearing a blue rose. But, Desmond says, "I can't tell you about that."

"You can't?" asks Stanley.

"No," repeats Desmond.  "I can't."

And there we have a little mystery.  The conundrums without answers are, of course, the most intriguing of all.  Suddenly, all the other stuff evaporates from our consciousness -- OK, drugs, legwork, local authorities, fine. Got it.  Let's move on: What about the blue rose?!? All we ever really learn about it in the rest of the movie is a remark Agent Cooper makes to Diane that this is "one of Gordon's 'blue rose' cases" -- whatever that may mean.  I can't tell you.

[For more about the thematic and geological territory of Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me see the Topography of Twin Peaks guided photo tour.]

From the original script of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me: 

Desmond pulls his arm back so that only his fingers come out of his sleeve.

As Desmond explains we - INTERCUT WITH: 

FLASHBACK: LIL'S DANCE In slow motion. 

ON LIL'S SOUR FACE 

ON LIL BLINKING BOTH EYES

ON LIL PUTTING ONE HAND IN HER POCKET AND ONE IN A FIST 

ON LIL WALKING IN PLACE 

WE SEE COLE PUTTING HIS FINGERS IN FRONT OF HIS FACE AND SAYING LIL IS HIS SISTER'S GIRL.

ON LIL'S RED WIG 

Stanley rides along quietly for a while.