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The Hollywood Theatre has been busy heating up the screen this month with its “Sextember” series, unleashing erotically charged films like Basic Instinct, Body Heat, Fatal Attraction and Showgirls.
That said, the theater is saving its most intriguing offering for last: a four-day engagement (Sept. 25-28) for Bound, the rarely screened directorial debut of sibling filmmakers Lana and Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix).
Released in 1996, Bound stars Gina Gershon as Corky, a repairwoman who falls in love with Violet (Jennifer Tilly), the girlfriend of a vicious mobster (Joe Pantoliano, who would go on to the play memorable Matrix turncoat Cypher).
Directorial debuts often deepen an audience’s understanding of an auteur’s style and soul, and Bound is of particular interest. Made for a mere $6 million, the film showed that the Wachowskis were capable of creating compelling entertainment without the seemingly endless resources required for eccentric spectacles like Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas.
Moreover, Bound anticipated the rise of intimacy coordination. The Wachowskis hired feminist writer and sex educator Susie Bright to choreograph the film’s sex scenes, and even cast her in a cameo role.
Today, Bound feels like a time capsule from a distant part of the Wachowskis’ lives, before they came out as transgender women and before they went their separate ways creatively (2021′s underrated The Matrix Resurrections was Lana’s first time directing a film solo).
Still, the film remains a mesmerizing beginning to a fascinating career, and a movie well worth experiencing on the big screen.