True Romance

When texts seem like parody one rarely stops to wonder if there ever was or will be an era in which they could seem sincere. When they seem sincere, the temptation to recast them as parody is often irresistible. True Romance is a film which furnishes this temptation elegantly, not merely because Tarantino's later work so explicitly plays against genre, but largely because on its own terms it showcases exaggeration. This showcase, no matter how theatrical, is quite pleasurable.

When a parodic reading feels like a misreading, it can only add to a text's case for earnestness. True Romance is admittedly a gushing romance. Its sarcastic title clues us into the entire ordeal, for while the textual romance is indeed true, the plot is un-true because romantic plots, in cinema or life, are not supposed to contain gory, mafia/cop utopian criminality. One entirely untenable reaction is that cinematic and real-life romance is un-true since both follow the narrative prescribed by cheap and sincere sentiments from Austen or soap opera. This is the only place romance can be found, the film seems to say, purged of complex psychology, cleansed of dissonant emotions, this couple marries on a whim, dreams together, escapes together, and after flirting with an amusing series of treacherous obstacles to the beachside frolic with a happy child, no problem, they make it in the end.

This reaction is illadvised because it requires that aspects of the film be realistic. My reaction is that far from supporting a renovation of genre film, this film is its arsenic. The romance it depicts is not true, it is not faithful to the genre nor to real life, and it thus provides for its own validity. You don't even have to enjoy it, but if you so much as watch it, it works. And the possibility for self-justified art is splendid.

Sure the metanarrative abounds, from the aspiring actors to the producers, to the bizarre and dogged inclusion of other cinematic texts on screen and television, to the startling denouement that takes practically between a film projector and a projection screen. But these moments aren't what justifies the film; rather it is the trademark tarantino plot trajectory inside a romance that reminds you not to take romance seriously.

Why was the infantile kid-at-xylophone score allowed? Who placed it at key dramatic instances when it was thoroughly inappropriate? When Slater cries at his father and recounts the man's sins, the pebbles drop optimistically and the sanguine score sucks all the legitimacy from the scene. Aside from the score, there should also, as always, have been more Christopher Walken. What deity confined him to the cameo?

True Romance