My Review of Bound (1996)

 

Written And Directed by The Wachowskis

Corky: "What are you doing?"

Violet: "Isn't it obvious? I'm trying to seduce you."

Keeping with LGBT themed blogs for this month, I went with something a bit crime and erotic related. Also a directing debut for a sibling team that wold three years after this movie release deliver one of the most iconic sci-fi films of all time.

Anyways, back to this one and it's a film where the erotic aspect isn't shy about showing. You've got recently released convict Corky (Gina Gershon) moving into an apartment building. She's there to carry out maintenance work on behalf of the unseen landlord and mostly to keep her head down.

The latter part however went out the window the minute she bumped into her new neighbour Violet (Jennifer Tilly), a former sex worker and its not long before both Corky and Violet are getting more intimately acquainted with each other. Of course there's a snag with this potential pairing.

Aside from Corky's justified trust issues, the snag was of course Violet's money laundering and bad tempered boyfriend, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). He's involved with the mob, there's money laundering at play and a rather unfortunate fella named Shelly (Barry Kivel) who lost a few fingers.

Violet and Corky had the not so genius idea of stealing the money that was being laundered with a rather contrived plan where Caesar would be gaslit into thinking that he would have to flee from his boss. Except that Caesar just ended up killing mobsters and even came close to killing both Violet and Corky when he wised up to their scheme.

The rest of the movie played out more as a crime thriller with Caesar nearly getting away with things, only for him to gravely underestimate both Violet and Corky. It didn't end well for him but as for Corky and Violet, they certainly managed to get their happy ending.

- The sex scenes between Corky and Violet were coordinated by Susie Bright, who appeared as bar owner Jess in the movie.

- Had things gone differently with this movie, both Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon would've played the opposite roles. Tilly was originally meant to be Corky.

- Standout music: Tom Jones She's A Lady gets nicely used at the end of this movie.

- Chronology: I'm assuming the same year as it's release and in a California setting.

Bound has certainly earned it's place in LGBT cinema and given how unapologetic it is in terms of it's sexuality and the magnetic chemistry between both Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. The crime stuff's a nice backdrop to boot.

Rating: 8 out of 10