ARTICLE : Pulp Goddesses: Tarantino and His Women, VOGUE

If I asked you to name a Hollywood filmmaker who creates strong women characters, I’m betting you wouldn’t instantly cry out, “Quentin Tarantino.” After all, ever since his debut with Reservoir Dogs, with its polychromatic crew of all-male crooks (Mr. White, Mr. Pink, etc.), he has been known as a maker of so-called guy movies. Yet while it’s true that Tarantino’s movies are violent and filled with macho palaver, he’s come up with more powerful and interesting female characters than Martin Scorsese and Nora Ephron combined. Take his new movie Inglourious Basterds, an erratically entertaining World War II fairy tale that opens this Friday. Judging from the ads, you might think it an ultra-violent action picture all about Brad Pitt leading a band of basterdly brothers to slaughter what he calls “Nazzies.” In fact, it’s nothing of the sort. Sure, there are a few bloody moments to placate Tarantino’s fanboy base, but the movie is essentially slow and talky, and unlike most war pictures, it boasts two key female characters. The movie’s emotional center is Shosanna Dreyfus, a Jewish movie-theater owner who dreams of killing Hitler to avenge both her family and her people—the role is actually meatier than Pitt’s. (She’s played by French actress Mélanie Laurent, whom I profile in Vogue’s September issue.) Although Diane Kruger gets less screen time as Bridget von Hammersmark, a sexy German movie star turned anti-Nazi spy, she’s the most comfortable I’ve ever seen her on-screen. And the most alluring. Enthralled and attentive—Tarantino’s superb with actors—he makes Kruger far more radiant than she was as Helen in Troy. This should come as no surprise to anyone who saw Uma Thurman dance with John Travolta in Pulp Fiction or remembers how Jackie Brown swooned over Pam Grier—here is one director who knows how to adore actresses. Steeped in film history and a worship of actors—I suspect that he himself would rather be a leading man than an auteur director—Tarantino is not one of those filmmakers whose feminine ideal begins and ends with Megan Fox.He likes to give actresses something they can sink their teeth into—big emotions, nifty dialogue, and action sequences that show off their physical grace. You get all three of these in Kill Bill’s Beatrix Kiddo, which isn’t simply Tarantino’s best female role, it’s the great role of Thurman’s career—funny and vengeful, loving and kick-ass. Beatrix is one of our era’s most memorable heroines, and in a better world (or at least if Kill Bill hadn’t been released in two parts) Thurman’s performance might have won the awards it deserved. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that Tarantino’s female roles are thunderbolts of feminist insight—Jane Campion he ain’t—or that they capture women’s lives in all their richness and complexity. You’d never confuse Beatrix Kiddo with the heroine of anIngmar Bergman psychodrama. Instead, like Bridget von Hammersmark andZoë Bell’s cackling stuntwoman in Death Proof, she’s a pop fantasy who has sprung full-blown from the skull of a man who, in his forties, often still seems like a goofy, overgrown teenager. But Tarantino’s heroines aren’t fantasies because they’re women. They’re fantasies because his psyche is saturated with movie mythology. His male characters are fantasies, too. What separates Tarantino from so many other directors who turn out male pop extravaganzas—you know,Transformers and G.I. Joe—is that his cinematic universe makes plenty of room for women. He likes them white and black, Latina and Asian. He likes them heroic and he likes them villainous. He likes how they move, how they banter, how they look in cool clothes. When most Hollywood directors tell you, “I really love women”—and trust me, they say exactly these words all the time—what they mean is that they love them in their arms or in their beds. Tarantino is a rarity: He loves them in his movies. —John Powers

Photo: Clockwise from left: Uma Thurman in Kill Bill (Miramax/Courtesy of Everett collection); Diane Kruger in Inglourious Basterds (Francois Duhamel/The Weinstein Company); Pam Grier in Jackie Brown (Everett collection).

I am a huge Quentin Tarrentino fan, the main element that I enjoy about his films is his strong female characters. In my opinion, he portrays women like no other director I have ever seen, making them interesting, strong and dominating rather than the sidelining love interest o the typically male lead.