The plot is a Rubik's Cube of classic Lynchian archetypes culled from the director's entire oeuvre: There's a pair of Hollywood dames at the heart of the story, Betty (Watts), a new arrival to the L.A. basin, who is intent on making her mark in the film world; and the amnesiac Rita (Harring), who takes her name from a Gilda poster because she can't recall her real one.
A poster of Gilda is reflected from a bathroom mirror as the amnesiac adopts more than Hayworth's name.
There are two characters named Betty and Rita who the movie follows through mysterious plot loops, but by the end of the film we aren't even sure they're different characters, and Rita (an amnesiac who lifted the name from a "Gilda" poster) wonders if she's really Diane Selwyn, a name from a waitress' name tag.
The brunette, who quickly adopts the temporary name "Rita" (after Rita Hayworth on a Gilda poster), has lost her memory and seems to be in big trouble.
The latter stumbles down the hillside into Betty's lair, espies a Gilda poster (thus christening herself Ritaas in Rita Hayworth), and the two womenthe ever-optimistic Canadian and the sullenly scared damsel in distressform a fatalistic bond as they begin a feature length investigation attempting to fill in Rita's blank past.
The woman, who eventually calls herself Rita after seeing a poster on the wall for the great romantic film noir Gilda (1946), begs Betty to help her.