Synopsis

An ex-convict working as a contractor in a Los Angeles apartment building becomes involved with Violet, the girlfriend of a paranoid mobster. The women begin an affair and devise a scheme to steal millions of dollars from the mob, but their plan depends on surviving betrayal, suspicion, and a violent criminal underworld that quickly closes in around them.

Factoids & Trivia

• Bound was made on a reported budget of about $6 million and was filmed over 38 days in the Los Angeles area.

• The film was the Wachowskis' feature-film debut. Its success helped establish the visual and storytelling confidence that would become more widely known with The Matrix.

• The production initially expected Jennifer Tilly to play Corky. After the actress originally intended for Violet left shortly before filming, Tilly and Gina Gershon exchanged roles.

• Cinematographer Bill Pope helped create the film's stylized neo-noir look. The filmmakers drew on classic noir as well as the stark, graphic qualities of comic books, including Frank Miller's Sin City work.

• The script was developed partly as a deliberate variation on familiar gangster-noir conventions, placing a lesbian romance at the center of the crime story rather than treating it as a side plot.

• Sex writer and cultural critic Susie Bright appears briefly in the bar scene and also served as a consultant on the film's lesbian material.

• The filmmakers wanted to use songs by Frank Sinatra and "The Girl from Ipanema," but the limited budget made those choices unaffordable.

• The film became known as an influential queer neo-noir and a cult favorite, particularly for presenting its central relationship as the driving force of a suspense thriller.