BOUND AND GAGGED: A LOVE STORY, as the tacked-on portion of the title might suggest, tries to recast THELMA & LOUISE in more radical terms, bringing the lesbian subtext of the earlier film front and center. This is accomplished with mixed results.
The pixieish Elizabeth (Elizabeth Saltarrelli) is dating the voluptuous Leslie (Ginger Lynn Allen), but can't resist an occasional fling with some anonymous beefcake, which makes Leslie extremely jealous. Meanwhile, Leslie is married to the insufferable Steve (Chris Mulkey), a macho creep who
variously suspects, threatens, manhandles, abuses, and more or less rapes her, but whom she still manages to defend in textbook co-dependent fashion.
When Steve finally finds the pair out, and Leslie tries to call the whole thing off--with her girlfriend, not her husband--Elizabeth takes matters in her own hands as the woman scorned. With the help of her friend Cliff (Chris Denton), a cuckold and imminent suicide, she tosses Leslie in the
trunk of a large sedan and whisks her away to imagined safety. Hence the "bound and gagged" of the love story. Meanwhile, Cliff's constant flashbacks--of his sexpot ex-wife in bed with anything that moves--provide the titillation needed to achieve classic road movie status.
Elizabeth's ultimate destination is a one-stop drug rehab/ cult-buster/12-step dude ranch run by the androgynous Carla (Karen Black). Along the way, they encounter numerous specimens of the male of the species who would do our Neanderthal forebears proud, culminating in two smarmy businessmen in
a roadside diner whom Elizabeth maces over coffee. When Carla finally realizes that the addictive disorder she is being asked to treat is Leslie's interest in men, and Leslie adds that she is only there under felony coercion, she announces that her hands are tied. Meanwhile, Cliff manages to
self-actualize and master his self-doubt, and Elizabeth learns that staged interventions are probably not a sound basis for continued romantic involvement.
BOUND AND GAGGED has much in common with the earlier PATTI ROCKS (1987), from its autopsy of gender pathology, to Mulkey as the odious male lead, to the Minneapolis locales and roots. But the sexual politics are quickly deflected by a marked lack of chemistry between the female leads, and by an
unsettling tendency to ground everything in the conceit of recovery culture. Also, a pronounced new wave feel throughout--from the kitschy cutout titles, to the prominent art-directed neon signs, to free-form conga lines that materialize out of nowhere--threaten to age the film much faster than it
would otherwise.
As the quotation in the final crawl adequately expresses it, "It is better to have loved and lost ... than to shove a screwdriver up your nose." An indisputable sentiment, perhaps, but not the most delicate of presentations. (Violence, extended nudity, sexual situations, adult situations,
profanity.) leave a comment