Screenwriter Callie Khouri’s desperada road-movie thriller Thelma & Louise is the classic whose Bechdel test credentials go all the way up to the title. Just over 30 years later, it looks punchier, bolder, hotter and sweatier than ever. This is a masterclass in narrative construction and character development and director Ridley Scott puts his pedal to the metal with pure action brio; I always particularly love the shot where the camera lovingly counter-swooshes back along the flank of the Thunderbird while it barrels down the highway, for the pure hell of it. It is a feminist crime classic in the tradition of Gun Crazy and Bonnie and Clyde, whose two heroines, played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, get the Polaroid camera out for the most famous selfie in film history. And that ending – although arguably a concession to the idea of crime not being allowed to pay – still has the power to stun.
The film is the story of two friends. Louise Sawyer (Sarandon) is a worldly wise woman waiting tables in a diner in Arkansas, whose supposed boyfriend, Jimmy (Michael Madsen) never seems to be around. Louise’s younger best friend is housewife Thelma Dickinson, a role in which Davis gave a wonderfully sweet-natured, innocent, vulnerable performance; it briefly made her an A-list star and we should have a twinge of regret thinking about the roles Davis should have been offered after this. Thelma is being bullied and cheated on by her boorish husband Darryl (Christopher McDonald) and longs for some escape. Then Louise offers her a special girls-only weekend break in a fishing cabin she’s managed to borrow – just the two of them, taking off for some fun in Louise’s sleek T-Bird.
