MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Bound’: A Road Film Searching for Itself

“Bound & Gagged” (Sunset 5) is subtitled “A Love Story” but you can sniff the irony a mile away. The only “love” in this movie is the dysfunctional kind that wrecks your life.

Leslie (Ginger Lynn Allen) is in an abusive relationship with her husband, Steve (Chris Mulkey), who, in his most tender moment with her, rapes her on the kitchen floor. Leslie’s best friend Elizabeth (Elizabeth Saltarrelli), who is also her lover, decides to wrest Leslie away from the lug by kidnaping her and taking her on the road. Along for the ride is Elizabeth’s best buddy Cliff (Chris Denton), whose wife has been flaunting her affairs in his face and who has been trying to kill himself in various ways to escape his misery. Elizabeth’s destination is Carla (Karen Black), a friend and professional deprogrammer who she hopes will knock some sense into Leslie’s programmed noggin.

“Bound & Gagged” (Times-rated Mature for sex and violence) is so fluky and scattershot that it never figures out what it wants to be: a nut-ball road movie or a feminist treatise. Daniel Appleby, the writer-director, has produced documentaries on family violence and battering, but the film seems most alive when it’s being irresponsibly oddball. Cliff’s attempts to do himself in have a “Harold and Maude” flavor, and Elizabeth’s vengeance on a goon who tries to rape Leslie is right out of early John Waters: They run over the attacker’s offending hand and then back up the car because they ran over the wrong hand.

The performers are geared up to put on a show but the script often leaves them stranded. Allen, who had a career in adult films, has a slugged, dazed quality that seems authentic, and Mulkey is terrifyingly good. Saltarrelli’s performance is all attitude and Denton’s is all lack of attitude. Black is barely on screen.

“Bound & Gagged” has its successfully weird moments but the upshot is like an Almodovar film that somehow got lost in translation.

‘Bound & Gagged: A Love Story’

Ginger Lynn Allen: Leslie

Elizabeth Saltarrelli: Elizabeth

Chris Mulkey: Steve

Chris Denton: Cliff

A Northern Arts Entertainment production. Director Daniel Appleby. Producer Dennis J. Mahoney. Executive producers Dennis J. Mahoney, Jay Harjula. Screenplay by Daniel Appleby. Cinematographer Dean Lent. Editor Kaye Davis. Costumes Deborah Fiscus. Music William Murphy. Production design Dane Pizzuti Krogman. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (sex and violence).