Gasoline

The be gay, do crime spend time in cars subgenre is surprisingly large. Or perhaps not that surprising, I don’t know. I blame Thelma and Louise. I’ve seen many of these movies and they run the gamut of one or two I love all the way down to ones I think are awful. Gasoline falls somewhere in the middle of this spectrum.

Shy Lenni runs a gas station with her girlfriend, Stella. Lenni’s mom comes for a visit and immediately, much of Lenni’s reserved personality is explained. Lenni’s mother is pretty awful and abusive. This leads to an altercation between mother, daughter and Stella that gets physical and Lenni’s mother hits her head and dies. Lenni and Stella of course now have to conceal the death. However, just as they’re cleaning up, some no good ruffians show up wanting to buy gas. Obviously, the two women have to get out of town until the heat dies down and to dump the body. What follows is a series of misadventures that fill the plot up to feature film length. Additionally, despite her mother being dead, Lenni begins to hallucinate her dead mother saying abusive and unkind things. This ghostly manifestation of guilt and abuse isn’t as easy to outrun.

Stylistically, Gasoline is very much in finding with the gritty indie aesthetic popularized in the 90s. This is rarely my favourite aesthetic though I have seen at least two gay crime road movies with this aesthetic that I liked. Gasoline isn’t either of those. At times the grit feels both needless and also, a bit overdone for what’s actually onscreen. It also at times feels at odds with the almost comic misadventures the characters get up to. I would have personally preferred a more stylized approach with less handheld cameras to suggest realism in what is ultimately, an unrealistic story.

I do like the addition to this subgenre of Lenni’s guilt and trauma manifesting as her mother still speaking to her. The depiction of abuse in the film is perhaps strongest in these moments. And I really like the scene in which Lenni has a discussion with her mother while cradling her mother’s corpse. However, I do wish this could have been a bit more of a journey. Lenni hears her mother’s voice almost immediately after her death. And most of the film operates on that same level of delusion. Perhaps a movie-long descent into increasingly elaborate or harmful hallucinations would have given the film more interest.

Gasoline is not the first gay crime road movie I would recommend to anyone. I don’t know if I would recommend it at all. It’s far too middle of the pack. While not bad as a film, this is a story I’ve seen multiple times done both better and more interesting. Gasoline is ultimately pretty forgettable if you’ve seen more than one queer crime film.

Overall rating 5.1/10

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