And as with male road pictures, it is sex that threatens to divide the two women. Not when they unite to blow up the truck of a leering, misogynistic truck driver, but when the drifter they pick up tires to exploit them and Thelma's attraction towards him. Thelma is more flighty and sexual, and her youthful, sexual drive, unfulfilled in her relationship with her husband, causes the events that propel the narrative of the road picture, and perpetually frustrates Louise. The film does seem to imply that women cannot have sex, love, freedom, and power but then again most road pictures suggest that men cannot settle down into marriage with women and still glory in the freedom of the road. Like the women's relationships, the male relationships of road pictures often seem homoerotic in their intensity and disdain of the opposite gender's compassion. However, when transposed onto a feminine narrative,...
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