by James Withers
(11/17/99)

Directors:
The Wachowski Brothers

Screenplay:
The Wachowski Brothers

Cast:
Jennifer Tilly (Violet)
Gina Gershon (Corky)
Joe Pantoliano (Caesar)

Bound gleefully dances with failure. First, it uses film noir styling, a technique that can bore movie watchers because it is so ubiquitous. Second, it uses two lesbians as main characters. Homosexual visibility is a good thing, but too often it reinforces tired stereotypes or portrays a homosexual life devoid of sex. For example: the TV show Will and Grace has a non-sexual gay man and a gay man who could be the poster child for gay cliché (for the record: give me the flaming stereotype over the eunuch any day of the week). Bound surmounts those dangers because its command of noir technique is stimulating, and its portrayal of lesbian life, and sex, is not bound (sorry!) by stifling judgments.

It is possible to see Bound as a story of gay liberation (please allow me to put those lit-crit courses to use). The film opens with an intense examination of a clothes closet. The camera focuses on the body of Corky (Gershon), who is tied up and gagged. It is obvious that Corky is knocked out cold (there is a gash over her eye), and she is hearing disembodied voices, voices we soon recognize as characters in the movie. The film leaves Corky in the closet and recedes to the past. Corky, just out of a five year stint in prison for what she calls "the redistribution of wealth," has a job fixing up an apartment. One day, she holds the elevator for Violet (Tilly), and Violet's boyfriend Caesar (Pantoliano), a money man in the Mob. Violet looks at Corky with blatant lust. Corky, with a fantastic lecherous smirk, returns the stare, but simply goes to work.

Violet's desire will not be dismissed so easily, and she carefully plans Corky's seduction. Corky, however, is no wallflower, and is willing to seduce and be seduced. The first love scene between Corky and Violet should be required viewing for all filmmakers because the scene is credible. It does not have that "obligatory" feel to it, and there is real sexual tension between the two characters (listen to Violet's voice and hear the urgent need). Susie Bright's work on this film -- she is listed as a "technical consultant" and has a small cameo -- has to have helped in making the sex both sensual and randy.

Good sex does not propel a story, and Bound is propelled by the story of Violet and Corky's plan to steal from the Mob. These two women need to break away from the male world they are in (is there anything more male-dominated than the Mob?) and create a world of their own.

If Corky and Violet are the erotic forces of the film, Caesar is the violent force that keeps attempting to destroy the erotic. Caesar remains throughout an unpredictable element because he is willing to kill whatever is in his way to keep his place at the Mob table. While it is easy to focus on the erotic in Bound, it would be unfair not to acknowledge the violence in the film. It is this stimulating -- human maybe -- combination of the erotic and the violent that allows Bound to satisfy both our Eros and Thanatos drives.