“I am sort of an emo – I love Morrissey,” admits Rebekah Del Rio. This is no surprise, given the way most of us were introduced to her. In David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, she plays the sorrowful singer La Llorona de Los Angeles, who appears in a pivotal scene with a heart-rending Spanish-language rendition of Roy Orbison’s ballad Crying. No matter your personal theory about Mulholland Drive – is the plot a Möbius strip with no beginning or end? – the scene at Club Silencio is the crux of the film. Del Rio appears to be singing live, but her voice carries on playing even after she has fallen to the floor in a faint: a metaphor for the deceptiveness of Hollywood and its indifference to suffering.
In her own life, Del Rio has faced professional disappointment, homelessness and the pain of losing a child. “My voice lends itself to that sadness because I carry a lot of that grief inside,” she says, as she finishes the North American leg of her No Hay Banda tour, a continued celebration of Mulholland Drive’s 20th anniversary. Alongside the late Julee Cruise, Del Rio is Lynch’s chief musical muse, but her relationship to Crying long predates her artistic relationship with the director.
