Business & Finance Club Magazine - Art & Culture --They called me up and said, "Would you like to make a short film for the internet? You can do anything you want, you just need to show the handbag, the Pearl Tower and some old Shanghai."

Who could resist such an offer? Not the film director David Lynch, and not when Christian Dior was doing the offering. Lynch may be known for edgy, unorthodox films such as Mulholland Dr and Blue Velvet but, for the past few years, he has explored a sideline in fashion films. He has worked with Gucci, Calvin Klein and Yves Saint Laurent on the filming of the Gucci, Obsession and Opium fragrance adverts respectively, as well as with shoemaker Christian Louboutin on a photographic exhibition about fetishistic shoes.

‘Different Angle'

"I think this idea is real interesting," says the director, in his southern drawl.

For Lynch, it is clear the lines will continue to blur. "This falls between a regular film and a commercial. I liked that idea. There are adverts and people get hit hard, and then there is this, where it is like coming at it from a different angle."

Lynch's Lady Blue is 12 oblique, enigmatic, weird but wonderful minutes crammed with Lynchian leitmotifs — flashing lights, flashbacks and a haunting soundtrack. It launched on the Dior website this weekend.

Those who log on will see French actress Marion Cotillard tiptoeing along a deserted corridor in a deserted Shanghai hotel.

She opens the door, terror etched across her face, to find a bag (yes, it's the Lady Dior!) — blue, square, on a pedestal, a light beaming behind it. Two security guards arrive to investigate and, as Cotillard describes the scene, she slips into a dream-like state. The bag has triggered the memory of febrile kisses exchanged between her and a Chinese paramour in front of Shanghai's Pearl Tower, and of his hurried escape, handing her a blue rose as he flees. She awakens, a tear trickling down her powdered cheek. She inches towards the bag, opens the clasp, looks inside and finds the blue rose.

What does it all mean? "I didn't know what the Pearl Tower was," explains Lynch. He found out "it was inspired by a poem, [about] pearls falling on jade".

"This thrilled me and started the ideas coming.

"Ideas are what you want," continues Lynch, in typically enigmatic mood. "Everybody has machinery, and so when the idea passes through this machine, it will come out a little different than if the same idea is passed through another machine."

As for Cotillard, "She has got that modern quality and old quality that I think the great ones have always," he says.