plumbing the depths of lesbian desire
by Douglas Messerli
Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski (as Larry and Andy
Wachowski) (screenwriters and directors) Bound / 1996
The 1996 movie Bound begins
with a scene we’ve all encountered a thousand times before in cinema, a woman
enters an elevator with a man, her eyes glancing over at the other passenger,
taking the person in with a knowing and lusty glance, which is returned, eyes
meeting, bodies
Violet loses no time, trotting over next door to see if Corky might help
her get back her earring she has “accidentally” dropped down the drain. This
plumber not only retrieves the earring, but like all plumbers shows her crack,
the two getting it on so suddenly that there’s no turning back.
If Corky, equally attracted, is a bit cautious at first, before you can
even spell the name of the famous head of the Chicago crime syndicate for whom
Caesar works, Gino Marzzone, Violet has not only bedded Corky but managed to
hint at a way out of her 5-year relationship with her gangland money-laundering
boyfriend, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), a relationship she convinces Corky she has
performed simply as if it were a job.
Caesar has been assigned this time to
quite literally launder the now bloody money, the man staying up late to wash
and press every single $1000 dollar bill and hang them throughout the apartment
to dry before Gino arrives the next afternoon to collect the restored loot.
Gino, it so happens, drinks only
Glenlivet scotch. So, according to Corky, it’s easy. Violet, in preparing a
cleanup for their august guest will accidentally drop the bottle, forcing her
to run out
As arranged, Violet returns with the
scotch, tells Caesar she’s just seen Johnnie leaving, and waits for her
suspicious boyfriend to wonder just enough to check on the cash. He does, and
just as planned, suspects Johnnie of having entered and stolen it.
The next step, so Violet and Corky
presumed, would be for Caesar to flee, knowing that Gino would assume that
Caesar, not his beloved Johnnie had robbed him. But Caesar, behaving somewhat
irrationally, as women in such situations are often portrayed, knows that if he
runs, he as much as admits he has stolen the loot. He decides to confront
Johnnie in front of Gino. Realizing that suddenly everything has begun to
unweave. Violet panics and threatens to leave. But Gino, now claiming he needs
her more than ever, beats her and forces her to stay on for the arrival of
Gino, Johnnie and the bodyguard, Roy.
Caesar and Johnnie have long gotten on
each other’s nerves, Caesar, in particular, detesting his hot headedness and
his constant flirtations with Violet. When Johnnie, after arriving immediately
begins to hit on Violet, Johnnie taunts him, finally pulling out a gun and
announcing that Johnnie has stolen the cash. When Gino realizes that the money
is gone and Johnnie appears
The next impossible step is for him and Violet to visit Johnnie’s
apartment to find the missing money. Just as in so many previous gangster
movies, he trashes the place in search of the loot, of course without finding
anything. In order to waylay Gino’s other mob palls, he telephones Mickey,
Gino’s best friend from Johnnie’s landline, faking Johnnie’s voice, that his
father never arrived at the airport.
Having found out that the money is next door, he drags Corky to that
apartment to find the money. Violet meanwhile escapes, calls Mickey to tell him
Caesar took the money, and returns, gun in hand, to save Corky from the
consequences.
So far, however, although the women have certainly made it clear that
they are extremely clever and have almost outfoxed their male counterparts, the
story seems to be going in the direction of so many other films about gay
figures throughout cinema history, those movies so brilliantly documented by
Vito Russo that end with the LGBTQ figure dead.
If nothing else, it surely appears it
will fit the pattern of what B. Ruby Rich has described in her essay, “Lethal
Lesbians: The Cinematic Inscription of Murderous Desire,” of the other “lesbian
chic” murder movies and real-life situations such as the serial murderer Aileen
Wuornos (arrested in 1991), Thelma and Louise (1991), Catherine in Basic
Instinct (1992), the teenage girls Hillary and Bonnie in Fun (1994),
the similarly young girls of Heavenly Creatures (1994), and the Papin
sisters of Sister, My Sister (1994)—all in either lesbian or close
sisterhood relationships—who were forced to suffer the penalties of taking on
the male prerogative of violence through death or imprisonment.
As Rich summarizes the situation: “…They get to drive off into the
sunset, not just the Grand Canyon, after committing the perfect crime: they get
away with murder, and money, a gun, and most of all, each other. It took five
years to get there, a half decade of eroticized vengeance.”
Rich also
observes that the truck they speed off in is blood red, a haunting reminder of
the significance of the lesbian menstrual blood that permeated the earlier
lesbian murder flicks as well as the numerous lesbian vampire films, Jean
Rollins' 1979 Fascination serving as an early emblem, before
AIDS made it necessary to remove that association.
Almost as interesting is the fact that the two brothers’ directorial
premier met with negative reaction by executives at some studios who insisted
that they could do the film only if the character of Corky where to become a
man. The siblings refused the suggestion, arguing “that movie’s been made a
million times, so we’re not really interested…”
Larry Wachowski began transitioning to a woman in the early 2000s, and
formally announced that she was now a woman, Lana Wachowski in 2008, appearing
as a fully transitioned female in 2012. Her former brother Andy came out as a
transitioned woman, Lilly in 2016. Obviously, the Wachowski’s even back in 1996
had sympathized with the female point of view enough that they knew where they
wanted to take their powerfully liberating movie.
Los Angeles, May 5, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema
Review (May 2023).
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