Tarantino S True Romance a Bad Movie About Love

¶ … True Romance in Real Life

True Romance is awash in fantasy. From the protagonists' attraction to comics to the hero's delusions of an Elvis (the patron saint of pop culture) who guides him on his fantastic journey to the sexually-charged, hooker with a heart of gold (male fantasy) to the uber-machismo (yet extraordinarily sensitive) male (female fantasy) to the white suburban middle class fantasy of a sex and violence-fueled escape from the bland world of McLiving to the fantasy land of Hollywood (and then Mexico), the film bears no resemblance to reality in the least. Instead, it is like a school boy's daydream. This paper will show why the kind of romance in True Romance would be impossible in the real world.

The two characters meet in a movie theater where Clarence is watching a triple feature. Alabama literally stumbles into him, nearly spilling her cleavage out of her dress, and all but announcing that sex is in the air as she wipes the popcorn from his lap as he attempts to tell her about the movie showing on the screen. This is supposed to be the innocent love/romance that Alabama has announced in voice over narration the audience can expect to see, as images of gritty Detroit are intercut together during the opening credits sequence. The film pretends to be rooted in realism for a moment -- but this is pure romance/fantasy. Clarence's dream is to resemble a character once played by Elvis Presley and not "give a fuck about anything." This is supposed to be machismo but it comes across as stilted, self-centered and inauthentic. It has none of the grim realism of Malick's Badlands, which Scott attempts to pay tribute to (and fails), even as it copies the earlier film's score. This is essentially every young man dreaming of a sex pot falling in love with him while he gets to live out the Taxi Driver fantasy, rescue her from a life of sexual slavery (for which she will be forever grateful and satisfy his every sexual desire, of course), partake of a cross-country journey (full of purpose -- they are both on the run from bad guys and bound for the land of dreams), and in other words wake up from a life of somnolence, emptiness, and meaninglessness. It is a pop culture fantasy playing out on screen. Reality has nothing to do with it.

The two characters meet, bond over movies, share pie, go to the comic store where he works (and hangs out -- the adolescent geek male fantasy), she of course can't help but be "turned on" by his amazing fantasy-infused world (movies and comic books and music!), they have sex, fall in love. He kills her pimp and snags a case full of cocaine. They run off together. He reconnects with Dad as they make their way to Hollywood. Bad guys give chase. The film is unwound with such hollow sentiment and plodding cliches that it feels like 90s kitsch (reflected in the neon colors shot with relish by the cinematographer) without any of the charm or depth or angst of the other much better 90s romance -- Baz Lurhman's Romeo and Juliet.

After sex, she sits outside and takes guidance from a billboard that reads, "Don't wait for the dust to settle," suggesting that the film is about to kick into overdrive because she found love and he is willing to become her knight in shining armor (that is how he gets to prove his valor and show that he is a real man, and not just a geeky comic book adult-child). They sit on the rooftop like superheroes, draped in blankets in the cold Detroit air, the city serving as a gritty backdrop, reminding the audience that all of this is very real and could even happen to you.

That lie, of course, plays into the fantasy development that the audience is supposed to engage in. Songwriter for The 1975 based a song "Robbers" on the fantasy that Alabama became for him -- a seductive yet uber-sweet woman (there is nothing femme-fatale about her, she is just all femme -- and completely unreal, unlike Spacek's naive, unpretty innocent in Badlands). The 1975 express how the love and romance theme of the film builds on the fantasies of the viewer and gives the viewer a sort of fantastic outlet: "She had a face straight outta magazine. God only knows but you'll never leave her." Picture perfect beauty is all it takes in the fantasy world of True Romance. That, of course, and a heart of gold, which both Alabama and Clarence have. She comes clean because she feels guilty that she was paid to sleep with Clarence by his boss. He doesn't mind, he thinks it was sweet of them both. Off he goes to tell the pimp that she'll no longer be hooking. The film goes into superhero/action hero mode -- Die Hard for adolescents in love. In reality, Clarence would more than likely go back to his dead end job at the comic book store, fantasize about a life with Alabama, and she would go back to hooking. As Patrick Smith notes in his review of the film, it is little more than a "giddy fairytale redesigned as a pulpy B-movie and jacked up on machismo." In other words, it is cliche and style -- and completely unreal.

The film presents several unreal expectations -- that faddish obsessions and sex can lead to love; that theft, drugs and violence are at the heart of suburban culture fantasies (in a world where little is forbidden, the only things that create a pulse in the otherwise comatose and confined American youth are the excitement of rebelling against all forms of control -- the police, the mafia, the workplace -- and fleeing to the land of fantasy (Hollywood) and then Mexico, when Hollywood becomes to blood-soaked). The title itself is a throwback to the old pulp comics of the 50s -- the True Love Stories, etc. -- and the film plays to the sensationalized crowd of the 90s -- the de-sensitized groupies, longing for some aggression, some machismo (after years of back-peddling in the face of the women's movement), some way out of the everydayness: this is the crowd that wants its cake and to eat it too. This is the fantasy on screen of the real world schlub.

True Romance delivers in terms of spectacle, but in terms of substance it is all hot air. There is nothing realistic about it. Director Tony Scott wanted to pay homage to Terrence Malick's Badlands, but the latter's film is steeped in realism, whereas Scott's film is nothing but style with all the gimmicky, "clever" dialogue that a Tarantino script can deliver. "You're so cool," is what Alabama says to Clarence, but it is felt that this is what Tarantino is saying to himself in the mirror.