I also realized, as I was watching it, that it is the ultimate example of the possibility of me coming to embrace the film noir genre -- which I am struggling to do with this year's monthly Knowing Noir series. I never previously considered it, but this is a noir -- a "neo-noir crime thriller," if we want to go with its exact description in the first sentence of its Wikipedia entry.
It's also the 25th anniversary of the film's release.
But none of those things are what I want to write about today.
Today, I want to again tell you about an instance of watching something without my wife wondering why I was watching it.
Now, it hadn't occurred to me that the hot lesbian sex in Bound -- and it is hot -- might be reason enough to save it for a night when she's not walking through the living room a half-dozen times. (My wife tends to do a lot of chores before relaxing for the evening with her TV, while I need to get started earlier for the longer running time of a movie.)
But it did occur to me once we watched the second episode of the new season of Never Have I Ever with our pizza dinner.
See, among other things this clever Netflix series does -- which include inexplicably and hilariously being narrated by John McEnroe -- is to have a lesbian subplot. One of the main character's two besties is Fabiola, a wallflower who hasn't yet started to have any physical relationships with other women. She's played by Lee Rodriguez, and she's only just gotten a girlfriend. I can't remember if they've kissed on screen before -- probably -- but in this particular episode, they definitely do, and she talks about how she's about to hook up in her best friend's bedroom.
Pretty tame stuff.
But hot enough to get me all worked up to watch two naked women going at it, in pretty risque graphic detail?
Such was my worry when it came to my wife's perspective on the subject of me watching Bound.
I had decided earlier in the day -- maybe the day before, I can't remember -- that I was going to watch Bound Friday night. I can't remember what triggered my interest to watch it on this particular night, but it actually happened to come up semi-organically on a Facebook chat during the day on Friday, after I'd already made my decision. That sealed it.
Now if I decided not to watch it based on what happened in this innocuous scene in Never Have I Ever, that would be admitting that my baseless paranoia on this topic was getting the better of me. Besides, I was primed and ready to watch it, and my reasons had nothing to do with lesbian titillation. (Let me tell you sometime about how this is one of the best and most clever scripts ever written.)
So I just decided to go for it, and hold my breath that my wife wouldn't walk through the room while Jennifer Tilly's finger was inserted inside Gina Gershon's vagina.
It worked out that way. Whew.
One time she came through during an overhead shot of the four mobsters beating Shelly in that bathroom immediately prior to starting to cut his fingers off. I didn't know if this qualified as a telltale scene from the movie, but she didn't say "Oh, you're watching Bound?" (She may have only seen it once.)
The next time was a scene with Joe Pantoliano and Tilly, with not much obvious happening.
And that was it.
So I remain safe in the knowledge that my wife thinks I watch movies for altruistic and upstanding reasons only. (In this case, it's actually true.)
Now that I've written this, I'm thinking "Damn, it would have been awesome to talk about some new takeaways from this viewing of Bound, or at least things I was reminded of loving about it."
So let's finish with a little Bound speed round. Warning, spoilers.
1) I love the character Mickey, played by John Ryan, the gangster with a heart of gold. In a world in which all women are disposable objects, Mickey treats Violet with respect. He's in love with her -- I think that's true of every character in the movie -- but his sense of what's right for her overrides all else. When she kisses him at their final parting and he gets this look of unbelievable longing in his eyes, overshadowed by the understanding that he can or will do nothing about it, his body makes a slight, almost imperceptible twitch toward her -- an amazingly subtle and perceptive choice by Ryan, the Wachowskis (have I not mentioned them yet??) or both. He'd like nothing more than to lean in and sweep her off her feet. But she has already politely declined his "offer," which presumably was for her to become his girlfriend. He doesn't want to trespass any further. So he forlornly gets into his car and drives away.
2) "Who's dead now, fuckface?" Spoken by Joey Pants while he holds the corpse of Christopher Meloni by the lapels. Still my favorite line of the movie, followed closely by Pants' "Fuckin' dark in here." (Joey Pants is like a walking quote factory in this movie.)
3) The ominous theme that plays twice when we see gangsters walking shoulder to shoulder to a fateful showdown is just gold. It's gold, Jerry.
4) One of my favorite details is that when Violet and Corky finally get alone, where Joey Pants ain't going to walk in on them ("Fuckin' dark in here"), their lovemaking is so intense that it pulls up one of the edges of the fitted sheet on Corky's bed. The next morning, when we get another overhead shot of them in bed, that corner of the sheet is still untucked. Great continuity.
5) A great callback is not the flawless repetition of a good line, but the little changes when a character inaccurately remembers it, as human beings are prone to doing. When Mickey starts cutting off Shelly's fingers, he says "I'm going to ask you ten times. Any time I don't get an answer, I'm going to cut off a finger." Obviously trying to imitate his mentor, Caesar repeats the same threat to Violet later on. But the Wachowskis aren't laboring under the misapprehension that a callback needs to be worded identically, because that's not realistic. When Caesar makes the threat, he says "I'm going to ask you ten questions," not "ten times." Some people don't notice these details. When it's a movie I love this much, I do.
I could go on. I won't. I'll just finish by repeating my standard recommendation about Bound: If you want to see a movie where all the characters are smarter than you are, but the clever decisions they make are all based in reality and as a believable outgrowth of their ability to improvise, then Bound is your movie. Also, if noirs have notably complicated plots that detract from the enjoyment for a certain type of viewer (such as myself), this is the absolute exception to that, as clear to follow as it is smartly conceived.
The titillating lesbian sex ain't half bad either.
No comments:
Post a Comment