Thelma and Louise (1991) is an American road trip drama. The full-length, female-driven buddy feature centers on the two eponymous women – Thelma (Geena Davis), a bored housewife, and her best friend Louise (Susan Sarandon), a waitress who shoots a would-be rapist that tried to attack Thelma outside a bar on the way to their weekend vacation. Low on options, the two women decide to go on the run in their Thunderbird, a journey that will change both of their lives forever. The original script was written by Callie Khouri, who won an Oscar for the screenplay.
This entry will focus on Louise, who leads the operation going on the run due to her dark past informing what can happen to a woman who kills a man even in something close to self-defense. She is a complicated character —
funny, tough, vulnerable, resourceful, smart as a whip, and can adapt to nearly any situation she (or Thelma) get into. Her relationship with her crappy boyfriend, Jimmy (Michael Madsen) can be rocky but realistic, with a pretty deep, adult understanding of who each of them are, and who they are to one another. It has its bouts of passion, both sexual and non-sexual. But Louise’s real love is the unleashed, free person Thelma becomes as they drive deeper and deeper into the Southwest towards Mexico. There are homoerotic underpinnings throughout the film (no, not necessarily their kiss before they go over the lip of the Grand Canyon — that reads are more of a confirmation they are do-or-die), but perhaps none more so than in a deleted scene from the shooting script that helps everything else in the third act fall into place:
While there is not much from Khouri about this exchange, one thing has changed since the writing of our original Unicorn Scale on the film — Sarandon, who plays Louise, has come out as bi.
From an interview with PrideSource:
Is your sexuality more or less rigid these days? Basically, should we be welcoming you to the family?
(Laughs) Well, I’m a serial monogamist, so I haven’t really had a large dating career. I married Chris Sarandon when I was 20, and that went on for quite a while – each of my relationships have. I haven’t exactly been in the midst of a lot of offers of any kind. I’m still not! I don’t know what’s going on! (Laughs) But I think back in the ’60s it just was much more open.
Are you open regarding your sexuality?
Yeah, I’m open. My sexual orientation is up for grabs, I guess you could say. (Laughs)
So at minimum, we do have an iconic bi character being played by an iconic bi actress.
Ultimately, the reading of Thelma & Louise as bi could be argued away in some circles. But considering the shooting script, and the story ends with a kiss and what some have interpreted as a sapphic escape, we think it is fair to say the film is some solid bi representation, even if it isn’t always blaring its queerness like a bullhorn.