Why I love Patri­cia Arquette’s per­for­mance in True Romance

Twen­ty-five years ago, Tony Scott’s True Romance opened in the­atres, becom­ing an instant cult clas­sic. A dark­ly comedic action romance, the genre-bust­ing film bursts with colour and poet­ry. A road movie in the tra­di­tion of Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night with a ​’90s twist, True Romance is blood, boobs and bub­blegum. A dirty lit­tle after-din­ner snack that prob­a­bly isn’t good for you, but tastes oh so good. For me, it’s not the blood or the shit-stained watch that makes this film so endur­ing­ly like­able, it’s Patri­cia Arquette and her icon­ic per­for­mance as Alaba­ma Whitman.

When I think of Arquette, I always imag­ine her voice. She has the tim­bre of sweet­ness, tinged with a raspy trem­ble. There is a song in her rhythm, a ten­ta­tive­ness that lies between coy and con­fi­dent. When she rais­es her voice, you want to stop and lis­ten. Like many great actors, Arquette just has a way of breath­ing and paus­ing that cap­tures your atten­tion. She rules all her mono­logues by a sense of antic­i­pa­tion, you want to know what she has to say next.

There is an inher­ent vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to her appeal, one that under­cuts the per­for­ma­tive cool­ness of Quentin Tarantino’s script. On the rooftop with Clarence (Chris­t­ian Slater), as she comes clean that she’s a sex work­er, she screams at him, ​“I’ve been a call girl for exact­ly four days and you’re my third cus­tomer.” With a blan­ket wrapped around her head, tears in her eyes, she is afraid that the man she’s falling in love with might not see her the same way. It isn’t shame that moti­vates her, but a fear that the love in her heart might be as cor­rupt­ed as every­thing else.

There are not many female char­ac­ters in the work of Taran­ti­no who demon­strate that lev­el of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Char­ac­ters like Shosan­na or The Bride, default to rage when they are humil­i­at­ed or con­front­ed with dif­fi­cult emo­tions. While to a less­er extent, only Pam Gri­er as Jack­ie Brown is allowed that kind of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Scott has a bet­ter track record but not much either. Arquette stands out as a female char­ac­ter that sub­verts the idea of fem­i­nine bad-ass by indulging her more sen­si­tive impuls­es, mix­ing shy­ness with confidence.

One of the more dif­fi­cult aspects of her char­ac­ter is that she is often per­form­ing. While with Clarence, her mask quick­ly drops – she uses her guile to get ahead. Return­ing to her motel room, as she enters the room Vir­gil (James Gan­dolfi­ni) is sit­ting in a chair with a shot­gun. For a moment, fear races against her face, but she toss­es her bag over her shoul­der and flirts. She’s wear­ing leop­ard print pants and blue sun­glass­es, her gig­gles are crys­talline. Even with sun­glass­es on, she tries not to meet his eye, afraid per­haps that he’ll see through her ruse.

She’s pret­ty and he’s charmed. She offers him a cig­a­rette, he refus­es but his mind is no longer on the gun. It’s not a femme fatale seduc­tion but an ado­les­cent game, and Gan­dolfi­ni plays off her with a sim­i­lar teenage ener­gy. He is shy and a bit embar­rassed, he even blush­es. In spite of the strange­ness of the inter­ac­tion, a young woman non­plussed by the shot­gun in his lap, he eas­i­ly buys into the idea that a woman could be so inno­cent and so fem­i­nine that she wouldn’t be phased by his presence.

It’s an incred­i­ble scene, in part because it accepts the arti­fice of our real world. In Scott and Tarantino’s over-the-top cin­e­ma uni­verse, Arquette serves as the bridge between the world of real emo­tions and the arti­fi­cial ones. Her pres­ence high­lights the pow­er of cin­e­ma to draw out real feel­ings and ideas out of fic­tion, while also hint­ing at the accept­ed fic­tions of our lived expe­ri­ences. The per­for­ma­tive aspect of fem­i­nin­i­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, is high­light­ed as not just an accept­ed fic­tion but one that is active­ly encour­aged in large swathes of society.

Arquette went on to star in some of the best movies of the next 20 years. Her dual role in David Lynch’s Lost High­way is an even greater artic­u­la­tion of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and arti­fice on screen. One of Arquette’s great tal­ents as an actor is an under­stand­ing of the big­ger pic­ture and her abil­i­ty to bal­ance dif­fer­ent real­i­ties at once. Even on a show like Medi­um, where she is gift­ed with visions, her great tal­ent as an actor is the abil­i­ty to live in the real­i­ty of the accept­ed world and the unknown realm of the sub­con­scious and supernatural.

Patri­cia Arquette is one of the great actors of her gen­er­a­tion and her role as Alaba­ma stands out as among the most com­pelling per­for­mances of the 1990s. As True Romance cel­e­brates its 25^th anniver­sary, it’s time to give Arquette her due in the build­ing of a cult clas­sic. Her role as Alaba­ma is more than just great act­ing, it uplifts the whole film.