"Jennifer Tilly plays Violet, a mob wife, prostitute, and femme with a steel-trap mind, and Gina Gershon plays Corky, Violet's ex-con lover."
— Halberstam, Jack [Judith] (b. 1961)
Work Title
Publisher
Duke University Press
Date
1998
Metaphor
"Jennifer Tilly plays Violet, a mob wife, prostitute, and femme with a steel-trap mind, and Gina Gershon plays Corky, Violet's ex-con lover."
Metaphor in Context
Two more recent examples of postmodern butch within mainstream film also stray far from the lesbian romance genre to work their magic. In the Wachowski brothers' film Bound, the butch enters the hard-boiled world of neo-noir. Jennifer Tilly plays Violet, a mob wife, prostitute, and femme with a steel-trap mind, and Gina Gershon plays Corky, Violet's ex-con lover. Gershon is quite convincing in the role of hardened thief, but she is far less convincing as a tough, handle-everything butch. The real surprise of the film, however, has to be the stunningly sexual performance by Jennifer Tilly. In the opening scenes, Tilly threatens to turn Violet into a bimbo femme with an irritating whine; however, Violet quickly develops a shrewd and self-determined character, and she has one great speech in which she upbraids Corky for daring to suggest that her tendency to pass as heterosexual makes her less than a bona fide queer. Bound's story line, in typical hard-boiled fashion, is tight and unpredictable, and its look is pure noir, with jagged camera angles and witty fades and close-ups.
(p. 227)
(p. 227)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Duke University Press, 1998).
Date of Entry
07/17/2014
