10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 7
7. Mr. C Is A Being Of Unspeakable Terror
Laura Dern's performance as Diane was sensational - more evidence that she perhaps the very best actress on the planet.
Before we got there, Albert Rosenfield summarised their meeting at the bar with his inimitable dourness. "How did it go?" Gordon Cole asked. "Not well. I said 'Hello Diane'. She said 'This is about Cooper, isn't it?' I said 'Maybe'. She said and I quote: 'No f*cking way.'"
Lynch put Dern through the wringer. She played caustic at first, refusing to offer Albert and Gordon coffee as she herself drank it. She said "F*ck you" to both of them before eventually agreeing to assess Mr. C in South Dakota. In what must have been a beautiful moment to those aghast at Lynch's nepotistic casting of Chrysta Bell as Agent Tammie Preston, Diane dressed her down, too. "What did you say your name was again?" "Tammie." "F*ck you Tammie."
Her scene with MacLachlan's Mr. C was loaded with gruesome subtext, in which Diane's hardened exterior crumbled in the face of him. The words "At your house" have never been more imbued with more terror. Both spoke - Diane with fear, Mr. C with a grisly impersonation of his split half - about the last night they saw one another.
It's was difficult not to infer (and for that matter to accept) - especially with the knowledge of Doc Hayward's similar implication - that Mr. C has explored the inert sexuality of Cooper to awful, oppressive effect.