Wachowski: The Beginning or How the Matrix Tempered Plumber Corky, who just reclined after a five-year stint, finds a part-time job with a local mafia - to clean the sewers and paint the walls in an apartment in an apartment building. Corky only wants to calmly wait out timelessness and lack of money, but, accidentally meeting in the elevator the fateful eyebrows of the neighbor Violet, realizes that the Big Cause and no less Great Love came to her before the parcel could reach the "America Post". But Violet turns out to be the mistress of the assistant of the same benefactor-mafiosi - Cisar. Although his duties include harmless money laundering in a literal and figurative sense, now the owner of a lace negligee becomes for Corky as beautiful as dangerous. One day, the girls decide to take the opportunity to play Butch and Sundance, pocket 2 million cosanostrine dollars and go to a happy tomorrow in an old pickup truck. However, the seemingly simple ex-lover Violet Cesar gives her friends an unexpectedly masculine heterosexual rebuff, and now the fate of the case with bucks and the heroines themselves is not so rosy, if you know what I mean. So the Wachowski debutants stormed into Hollywood, shooting their first, but, by a strange coincidence of cinematic circumstances, far from the last cult film.
Someone, perhaps, it will seem strange that in attempts to attract investors to their native matrix offspring, the directorial family laid out such a controversial trump card for the mid-90s - an erotic thriller with a lesbian bias. Actually, in the sexual component is not surprising, because literally nose to nose with the rental of “Links” came out and successful “Showgirls”, and talentless “Striptease”, not to mention record sales of knives for ice picking in that decade. Rather, the fact is that a bit of awkwardness in the audience’s perception candid bed scenes between the performers of the main roles Gershon and Tilly can cause even now, and this after a possible training of French Bolognese naturalism. Yes, and to recall projects from those years with a similar same-sex turn of Mercury to Venus, which are also not purely LGBT-niche, and designed for a wide audience, on the go fails. And, if at the premiere screenings the thesis “heroine on heroin” seemed to be an absolutely game-like moment, coming from somewhere from the teenage porn fetishizations of the directors, then after placing it in the context of the fate of “Lana” Wachowski, it acquires a completely different shade – the possible personal involvement of Larry’s second “I” in this handwritten script.
In general, despite the genre uncharacteristic for the rest of the work of the family, “Connection” in 1996 clearly demonstrated how resourceful the brothers are so far in terms of stylistic design of their paintings. Once driven into a tiny budget, almost equal to the subject of controversy of the characters of the film, the Wachowskis focus the action in only two apartments. At the same time, they ingeniously extract obvious benefits from this necessity in the name of economy. The hypotoxic atmosphere of the chamber suspense is the best suited to the feeling of the heroes being driven into an individual trap: for Violet it is a prostitute bondage, called for decency cohabitation; for Corky it is a slavish gratitude for a roof over his head and money for life received from hands, which in response strive to row more, for Cisar – eternal vegetation on errands from more successful or just successfully born “business colleagues”. Already here and now, despite the lack of newfangled sijiai / jiaijo effects, and perhaps thanks to it, the color design of paintings characteristic of Wachowski in the future, and interesting camera discoveries are visible. But, turning in the "speed Rider" game in the spots of Rorschach crazy clown, here the colorization of the frame subtly meets only the set directorial tasks, not being a posturing thing in itself. The paleness of the characters’ faces, their permanent presence in the shade or on a light background, are periodically diluted by bright red spots of hung blood-stained banknotes, slowly falling drops of blood on the snow-white rims of the toilet and tiles or swiping the color, oddly enough, on the blood of the phone button. Genrely identifying his debut with the entourage of neo-noir, the Wachowskis allow themselves small liberties, such as changing the sex of a “male in exceptional circumstances”, leaving the future permanent operator of the “Matrix” Bill Pop to honor the canons of the genre with the help of classic distorted angles, then and then taking the heroes too high or, conversely, too low.
It seems paradoxical that these brothers and sisters, who rarely shoot and at the same time often leave the audience puzzled immediately after watching, were able to earn status in modern cinema. But forcing at first to think about its logic, the plot of “Connections”, for example, is not inferior to the criminality of “Just Blood” by other brothers – favorites of the Coen film awards. In addition, the Wachowskis are one of the few who have the courage to take over the leadership of adaptations of difficult to transfer to the screen of book primary sources – from hating all sorts of cinematographers Alan Moore and his “V for Vendetta” to terrensomalic prose “Cloud Atlas”. Even the seemingly outright failures of the director’s “Speedy Rider” or the production “Murderer Ninja” are actually the result of ambiguous but bold attempts to bring the traditions of Japanese anime and manga to the soil of the Hollywood action movie, for which Zach Snyder once paid in “Forbidden Reception”. And the fact that “The Matrix” in many ways opened the door to the XXI century for cinema, and there is no need to say. Therefore, going to each of their next "Jupiter Ascension", most likely forcing shamefully to hide the ticket root from people asking what session you spent time, remember a little modified words from the "Connection", which gave them the way to life - "You can fuck with the first person you meet, but show them your film ..." To do this, we must know them as ourselves.” Be sure, they will share with you something native, albeit delusional, but exalting them themselves, as a new unexplored sandbox could once please a child.