"Bound" A Film Review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL October 19, 1996 "Bound" was the film that opened the 7th Annual Pride Film Festival here in Tampa a couple of weeks ago, in a sneak preview to an overflow audience the day before it opened at commercial theaters around the Tampa Bay area. Since I didn't get a chance to review it then and it's still playing commercially at least at the 20-plex in Brandon, I thought I'd catch up with it this week. I found this to be, despite the excessive violence that may well keep some of you away just as it caused some people to walk out of the theater at the opening night performance, a very interesting and compelling film for a variety of reasons. It's rare to see a film in mainstream release in which lesbian lovers are the heros and get away with it. Basic Instinct is the one that comes to mind that comes closest to this situation, but there, of course, by the end there was only one lesbian left and she, Catharine, was hardly portrayed in a heroic or even halfway positive light, though she did still have her ice pick at the ready when the film ended. So, in this sense, Bound is a landmark film of a sort. The opening titles scream "film noir," so you know it's going to be a contemporary version of that 1940s underworld genre where the women are usually gangster molls and there's some deep enigma about one of them that gets unravelled in the course of the plot, as well as a basically "good guy" (who may still be a criminal) who gets embroiled in the situation thanks to her. And, sure enough, "Bound" is definitely a neo film noir with the difference that it's about two women rather than a woman and a man. One is e a working class ex convict named Corky (Gina Gershon) hired to remodel an apartment in a high-class mob-owned building in Chicago and the other is Violet (Jennifer Tilly), the mistress of a mobster who lives in the next apartment. Violet notices Corky in the elevator and it doesn't take her long to come on to Corky. They have sex, but Corky is pretty suspicious of Violet; thinks she's being toyed with by someone who's not a "real" lesbian. When Violet confides in her what her situation is and asks Corky to help her extricate herself from what has become her intolerable situation as mistress to mobster Caesar (Joe Pantoliono) trust between them becomes a major issue and the main open question about Violet's character to be resolved. Corky takes a chance and is the brains behind a plot they hatch in which to steal two million dollars from the mob and blame it on Caesar. This film was made by the Wachoski brothers, Larry and Andy, and is more than a little bit derivative in both its level of violence and its showy shotmaking, of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. They hired lesbian sexpert Susie Bright to advise them on the sex scenes, presumably, and since they were very well done and I don't believe would be found offensive by lesbians (as are some lesbian sex scenes conceived of by non-lesbians), I guess Susie's work paid off. There doesn't seem to be any way in which this film, even with its two central women characters, could be characterized as a feminist film. In fact, as I think of the plot structure, nothing in the film even requires that the "heros" be lesbians; the same plot could have been filmed years ago (and it probably was) with a handsome young male working-class ex con in the Corky role and the film would hardly have been any different. So the lesbian element is not inherent to it, but a nineties update giving the film a little something different. Nonetheless, there is a certain revenge factor that it shares with a lot of recent feminist or feminist-themed films where women have the chance to get back at the men who have made them miserable (for example, The First Wives Club, Waiting to Exhale, to name two). When the point in the film arrives where Violet has the opportunity to spare Caesar's life or kill him, he's cocksure she would not be capable of pulling the trigger. But it's payback time for those five miserable years of abuse and with the words, 'You don't know shit about me, Caesar" she blows not his car but him away. By using their wits, their guts, their criminal experience, and by trusting one another, the lesbian lovers in this film walk away with the money, the revenge, and one another while that most patriarchal of all institutions (except perhaps the Church) gets its richly deserved comeuppance. If you have a taste for this sort of thing and can stand to watch or can cover your eyes and sit through the violence, this is another pretty good homage to film noir by some energetic and talented young filmmakers. For the WMNF Women's Show, this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. Copyright 1996. All rights reserved. Please do not copy or reproduce this review without permission of the author: mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf.edu.