Thelma & Louise meets Bound with an Italian twist, in this lesbian thriller. It's a laudable attempt to play the Wachowski brothers at their own game, but it's hampered by a frustratingly underdeveloped script that juggles matricide, ghosts, and Sapphic desire while remaining doggedly less than the sum of its parts.
"STATIC ROAD MOVIE"
Styled by debut writer-director Monia Stambrini as "a static road movie" (read "so low budget that we couldn't afford to change location"), Benzina kicks off at an out of town petrol station - hence the title - run by two lesbian lovers. Stella (Maya Sansa) is a tomboy brunette with a penchant for cowboy boots and hot pants, while Lenni (Regina Orioli) is a shy, bespectacled blonde.
After push comes to shove (quite literally) when Lenni's domineering, oversexed mother arrives to rescue her beloved daughter from the horrors of homosexuality, the girls find themselves lumbered with a dead body. They jump in their battered Volvo to dump it in a nearby rubbish tip.
"MORE SILLY THAN SULTRY"
Bearing more than a hint of noirish surrealism - with a languid soundtrack that has just the right air of sweaty, jaded exhaustion - Gasoline's atmosphere is straight out of David Lynch. The rest of the film, though, is more silly than sultry, as Stambrini takes us along deserted back roads, sets up a chance encounter with an alcoholic priest, and throws in the ghost of Lenni's dead mother for good measure.
Refusing to deliver the kind of voyeuristic eye candy lesbian chic that made-by-boys-for-boys Hollywood movies like Bound are fixated on, Stambrini demands we focus on her lead actresses' performances instead.
This would be commendable, if only Sansa and Orioli had enough material to work with. Saddled with a flimsy script that only has a trio of nasty joyriders to provide dramatic tension, Gasoline is a sputtering, under-revved movie in desperate need of a fuel injection and some go faster stripes.
In Italian with English subtitles.
Benzina (Gasoline) (2003)
