I HEART: Inglourious Movie - Glorious Style

I like Tarantino, I really do. I love his enthusiasm, his quirkiness and I generally think he can carry a cowboy shirt more than the average dude out there. I think he'd be great at a party if you don't mind the fact that he will probably monopolise it whether you like it or not. So, I do, I like the guy and I'd invite him to my party any day. And that's why I walked in the cinema to see his latest, Inglourious Basterds, or Inglorious Bastards, or plain silly Inglourious, hoping for the best. I won't go into a detailed critique here but I will only say that I wish Quentin would stop fooling around with his pals a bit and focus on making a movie. Someone should kick him out of the party and send him home to finish his homework!

I still enjoyed it for a few reasons, mainly because Quentin likes strong women, kick-ass women, and I do too, and Melanie Laurent's character, the gloriously named Shoshanna (try saying her name without going all French gooey) is just that.

The sets are also fantastic, especially in the final cinema scene and the costumes are trully great. Anna Sheppard is the Costume Designer and boy, does she deliver! I loved every single piece of clothing that Shoshanna wore and in some scenes I couldn't stop thinking that she'd look great in an A.P.C. catalogue, shot by Bruce Weber in a Parisian café with colourful type strewn around the page by M/M Paris. Interestingly, Ms Sheppard was Oscar-nominated for her work on two other seminal Second World War films, Schindler's List and The Pianist, but this was a QT movie and things were done QT's way. She told Variety, "When Quentin first called me, I knew this was the chance of a lifetime, but my objection was that I would be doing yet another '40s film. But, after I read the script, I realized this was a completely different '40s." So, she played with the past. She dressed one actor in a "cream-colored jacket that never existed in history." She altered the designs of the Nazi uniforms. And in the aforementioned final, climactic scene, she convinced Tarantino "that Melanie Laurent should be dressed in bright red so she wouldn't disappear in a sea of black dresses and tuxes."

Sure, the bright red gown grabs all the attention, and her pretty black veil is definitely a great touch but for me, it's Shoshanna's other clothes that show great direction. There's a particular pair of trousers that she wears in one scene (or it could be a jumpsuit, not sure exactly but couldn't find an image) that's cut just above the ankle that I loved. Before seeing the movie, I expected Diane Kruger's character to be the centre of attention, at least stylistically so, but aside from her fantastic suit with a jacket that could have been part of Dior's latest couture show and the inventive little pleats at the collar of her blouse/shirt not much else grabbed me. Great accent though! And, I just have to mention Julie Dreyfus's character whose outrageously OTT outfits made me feel that she deserves her own Tarantino movie. Hello, the lady translated for the Nazi officer's for Uma Thurman's sake!!!

So, there you go. How can you stay annoyed with Quentin when he goes and does things like that?
Images from imdb.