ABSTRACT
This chapter considers films with complex, fragmented narratives and aesthetics, and argues that cinematic structure and visual style can offer ways of disrupting cultural insistence on universal monosexuality. It interrogates the politics of fragmentation in relation to bisexuality, representation and the femme fatale. Mulholland Drive initially appears to present a similar situation in which solving the mystery of the noir plot is made possible through a diagnosis of the bisexually active femme fatale's true desires. Representing bisexual activity on screen is a complex undertaking, fraught with pitfalls made up of the narrative methods of mainstream cinema. The telling of stories of women's fluid desire is a vital project for a feminist reclamation of sexual orientations that can so easily be dismissed as inauthentic, or appropriated by a patriarchal male gaze, and the fragmented narratives of these bisexually active femme fatale films provide that space for those stories to be told.
