True Romance

TRUE ROMANCE (1993). In this darkly comic web of crime, murder and mayhem from writer Quentin Tarantino and director Tony Scott, novice prostitute Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) and her lover, comic book store clerk Clarence Worley (Christian Slater), become a Bonnie and Clyde for the 1990s. When Clarence kills Alabama's pimp, the newlyweds ride off into the sunset -- with $5 million worth of cocaine in a suitcase and the police and the mob on their trail. (123 mins)

Here are a couple of things that came up during the discussion:

*One of the most interesting things about True Romance is that despite it being a film about two supposed rebels, what we see in the end is a picture-perfect family -- mom, dad, and baby living happily ever after on a beach somewhere. But then again, the narration (the voice of Alabama) tells the viewer that if Clarence had died in the shoot out, "things would have pretty much turned out the same." This echoes her blasé introductory voice over in the opening scene.

* Despite being a road film, the two protagonists (and thus we) aren't seen a lot on the open road. But it still feels like a "road movie" through and through, especially if you consider some of the symbolism of the road: it's a place on which this good-natured couple is forced to traverse after leaving their cozy, safe (if not somewhat stagnant) lives in Detroit; it's where they arguably mature and come of age as they travel through LA, a city of endless intertwined freeways; and it represents the means to their paradise -- they get off the road and settle into their lives on the beach, a kind of paradise, as we see in the final scene.

*The issue of Clarence's moral character came up too: Was he an innocent comic book-loving nice guy who found himself needing to defend his wife's honor and was in fact forced into a life of violence? Or was he always a bit of a rebel who just hadn't found his cause? One could argue that Alabama became his cause, and he did, after all.