It is true that the portrayal of lesbian love in Delphine et Hippolyte is dark and negative. Lesbianism is like a dreadful narcotic. The lovers have “yeux amortis” [“deadened eyes”]), “l’air brisé” [“look broken”] and indulge in “la morne volupté” [“mournful voluptuousness”]. (22) The love of Delphine and Hippolyte is awfully ambivalent. The young lover Hippolyte suffers harrowing remorse. She is haunted by “de noirs bataillons de fantômes épars” (“black battalions of scattered ghosts”] (23) The women have performed “une action étrange” [“a strange act”] (24). The dominating, ravenous Delphine is likened to “un animal fort qui surveille une proie” [“an animal who observes its prey”] (25). She is vampiric. Hippolyte is “marquée avec les dents” [“marked with her teeth”] (26). Their love is sinful. They are damned. The lesbian is identified as nothing less than evil. Whether it is agreed that Baudelaire changed his attitude toward lesbian love, it remains problematic. As the lesbian is conflated with an elite, creative masculinity, the lesbian is nothing other than a product of a masculinist imagination in Baudelaire’s poetry. Sapho is identified as male (27). Although Baudelaire may depict the lesbian as beautiful, sensual and transgressively evil, his denial of the femininity of his lesbian lovers and in his hatred of maternal identity in general reveals a powerful misogyny. In Baudelaire’s poetry, the lesbian remains an exceptionally ambivalent figure.

In Mulholland Drive, David Lynch depicts lesbian love as singularly sensual and tempestuous. It expresses a unique emotional power. It is beautiful and tragic. As the kisses of Lesbos coalesce with tears, the lovers of Mulholland kiss and cry copiously. Further, lesbian love in Mulholland is both pure and evil. It is extreme. It is other. Lynch’s poetic dualistic vision conforms to Baudelaire’s vision of women as both pure and devilish. In the magical scene at Silencio the women’s love exists outside the time and space of Hollywood. It is also aligned to the occult. Thus, David Lynch’s lesbian lovers exhibit a paradoxical Baudelairean character. It may also be revealed that Lynch’s depiction of lesbian love is politically questionable. He similarly employs such images of the lesbian as a male fetish and portrays her as extremely sexual, sexually violent and violent. The beautiful Betty transforms into the evil Diane. In his identification of the figure of the lesbian with sexual violence and violence in general, we may ask if Lynch obscures male sexual violence. The cultural demonisation of female violence and the identification of female violence with so-called perversion has historically served to mask universal male violence. Does Lynch sustain such misogynist myths ? Equally, does his portrayal of lesbian love reproduce poetic associations of female homosexuality with darkness, however seductively fetishised as a great perverse other ? As evaluated above, in consideration of Lynch’s iconographic Hollywood representations of woman and female homosexual love as pathological, I do not think that Lynch regressively reproduces negative imagery in its allusion to poetic influences which phallicise and demonise the figure of the lesbian. Perversion for Lynch is always inherently, constantly ambivalent. Lynch is neither a moralist or misogynist. He does not ultimately damn his heroines to hell. Lynch evokes and plays with poetic conceits. In demonstrating Baudelaire’s modernist influence in his modern portrayal of lesbian love, Lynch binds his poetic vision to the avant-garde notions and images of the past while applying a post-modern consciousness. What lingers after viewing Mulholland is its Baudelairean sensuality. However, Lynch does not portray Diane as a Satanic creature. She is neither a vampiric nor a masculine lover. Further, if there is an evil icon in Mulholland, it is Hollywood. Indeed, Betty and Rita’s love-making could be said to make up the purest moments in Mulholland Drive. Their love transcends a Hollywood characterised by artifice and corruption. In making their love natural and authentic, Lynch arguably subverts the Baudelairean conceit of the lesbian as the embodiment of artifice. Moreover, it is the romantic “otherness” rather than the transgressive quality of lesbian love which Lynch celebrates. Ultimately, what dominates Mulholland is its tragic romance. Diane’s decline is depicted as dreadful and sorrowful.