GASOLINE aka BENZINA

Year: 2001
USA: Strand Releasing
UK: Millivres Multi Media
Cast: Maya Sansa, Regina Orioli, Mariella Valentini, Luigi Maria Burruano, Chiara Conti, Marco Quaglia, Pietro Ragusa
Director: Monica Stambrini
Country: Italy
Language: Italian (English subtitles)
USA: 90 mins
UK: 88 mins
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language, moderate sex, sexual threat and drug references
USA Release Date: 2 July 2003 (Limited Release - New York)
UK Release Date: 14 November 2003
US Distributor
UK Distributor

Synopsis

GASOLINE aka BENZINA is the tenderly dramatic story of two young girls not much over twenty.

The story revolves around Stella (Maya Sansa) and Eleonora nicknamed Lenni (Regina Orioli), a petrol station, a snobby, super-bourgeois mother hovering threateningly over Lenni's life, the two girls' love affair and their desire to escape together.

The girls have two opposing lives to escape from:
Lenni - blonde hair and a conventional bourgeois life.
Stella - black hair, a chaotic life, no family and no rules.

But an accident, or maybe a crime, spirals into a desperate night-time journey, a kind of odyssey, with a cumbersome corpse to get rid of without being seen. Unwanted visitors to the petrol station only complicate their plans and Lenni and Stella's closeness is tested to the limits at times as they decide what to do and where to go next.

THELMA AND LOUISE meets HEAVENLY CREATURES, Italian style and like in BOUND the one who appears the strongest, isn't always the sharpest.

GASOLINE aka BENZINA, the directorial debut of Monica Stambrini is a lesbian thriller based on the novel by Elena Stancanelli. Stambrini, 31, studied filmmaking in Milan, and is known for her militant, gay short films.