![]() Whereas other erotic thrillers had a (sometimes self-reflexive) misogynistic tinge, Bound’s feminist implications are unmuddied – these women want out of patriarchal mob society, and the film wants them to get there. The erotics of the scenario are certainly foregrounded – when Violet puts the moves on Corky by inviting her over to do some light plumbing, the Wachowskis make the image of a leaky kitchen pipe into something hilariously suggestive – but beyond the frisson generated between the leads what you really notice is that they genuinely seem to be delighted by each other. Such films turned sex into a plastic spectacle and power trip, motivated as much by a critique of consumerist individualism as by their makers’ mercenary sense of the American public’s appetite for vanilla kink.īut Bound stands out for the way it invests its genre tropes with unabashed romantic sincerity. Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly nearly set the screen on fire in this clever, female-powered twist on the standard Mob caper film. In 1996, a neo-noir with dual femmes fatale couldn’t avoid being slotted alongside that decade’s surge of erotic thrillers, like the iconic Basic Instinct (1992), which for its own dubious take on a bisexual love triangle had been picketed by LGBTQ+ activists. Years before the much-imitated “bullet time”, the sisters were giving their gunfire kinetic visual accentuation in the form of shattering picture frames and swirls of spilt paint. The comic book look of the Matrix films always generated talk, but here in a minor mode you appreciate what the Wachowskis’ graphic sensibility adds to their storytelling. This sounds like a bit of a leap to the techno-philosophical kung fu action of the Wachowskis’ next films, but shut your eyes and listen to composer Don Davis’ nervy audio stings, or close your ears and clock the procession of key objects and locations – analog telephones and gloomy mid-century apartments – and you’ll register a set of stylistic seeds taking root. Bound stands out for the way it invests its genre tropes with unabashed romantic sincerity.
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