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Gasoline

2001, Movie, NR, 85 mins

Gasoline: Review

GASOLINE | BENZINA | GAS
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Impressively stylish but curiously empty, this dark Italian romance spices up THELMA & LOUISE's gals-on-the-run scenario with a dollop of lesbian l'amour fou. It's been two years since blonde, bespectacled Lenni (Regina Orioli) last saw her domineering mother (Mariella Valentini), but when they finally meet their reunion ends in manslaughter. Without telling her mother where she was going, Lenni one day dropped out of university, hopped on her Vespa and drove into the dusty desert outside Rome, taking a job serving coffee at the gas station owned by dark-haired Stella (Maya Sansa). Within minutes of meeting, Lenni and Stella became lovers and have been inseparable ever since. Lenni's mother tries to lure her daughter home using 20 million lire as bait, but Lenni refuses to leave and the argument quickly devolves into a brawl. Stella takes a swing at Lenni's mother, who bangs her head on the café counter and is knocked unconscious. Lenni tries to call for an ambulance, but Stella rips the phone out of the wall. Lenni's mother dies in a pool of blood and spilled sugar on the café floor. In shock and terrified that the accident looks like premeditated murder, Lenni and Stella decide to take the lire and run, leaving the body at a nearby dump and heading north to Naples. They're about to move the corpse into Stella's car when three rowdy revelers — Filippo (Pietro Ragusa), Sandro (Marco Quaglia) and Pippi (Chiara Conti) — pull into the closed station and demand that Stella fill their tank. When they threaten to make trouble, Stella relents, but as they pull away she ruins their paint job with a deep scratch to the rear fender. With the corpse now in the trunk of Stella's car and their dog, Clio, in the back seat, the girls take off into the sweltering summer night. Just when it looks like they're in the clear, Filippo and friends reappear at the worst possible moment, pissed about the damage to their car and looking for pay-back. Obviously influenced by David Lynch's WILD AT HEART (1990), in which the highway becomes a nightmarish tunnel of love strewn with mangled cars and broken hearts, American-born director Monica Stambrini's debut feature quite literally goes nowhere. Despite their desperate escape, the girls wind up exactly where they started, and the viewer is left with the feeling of having seen it all before. (In Italian, with English subtitles.) leave a comment --Ken Fox
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