by MATTHEW HAYS

Bent characters are no strangers to big-screen murder, from the numerous shady noir criminals to the Leopold-Loeb killers (who have inspired a handful of films alone). With her feature directorial debut, Italian filmmaker Monica Stambrini takes a couple of dyke characters and sets them up with an inadvertent killing, with often hilarious results.

Set in a gas station, Gasoline (Benzina) has two young lesbians, Stella and Lenni, fall rapturously in love with each other. But their newfound romance is soon dealt a bit of a curveball when Lenni's conniving, interfering mother is inadvertently killed - or was she? This mystery surrounds the film, as both gals would clearly rather mama was six feet under (in the Elena Stancanelli novel upon which the film is based, the murder is obviously intentional).

Gasoline artfully leaps between two suspenseful bits of tension. Stella and Lenni try desperately to find a safe place to dump mom's corpse (a corpse that continues to nag the two as they try to dispose of it). Their efforts are interrupted when some obnoxious homophobes who gas up at the station start giving our heroines a bad time. A chase follows and, perhaps predictably, some things get blown up (this is a movie called Gasoline).

Gasoline isn't a brilliant movie, but it is highly entertaining and has a few elements working especially strongly in its favour. The lesbians in the movie are played beautifully by Maya Sansa and Regina Orioli, and the tension they capture is basically perfect, caught between geeky and sexy, murderous and innocent. The violence is other-worldly, with a talking, didactic corpse alternating with what feels like the ultrarealistic threat of hate-filled violence.

A neat little twister, this: Gasoline is funny, spooky and romantic, an inspiring tale that feels equal parts Lynch and Campion. Defying easy categories, Stambrini has concocted a film that's both fresh but familiar - a smattering of film history updated with the kind of brash, unapologetic bent sexuality the big screen could use more of.

Gasoline opens Friday, Aug. 15 at the Cinéma du Parc

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