Schlock

I went to see the new Quentin Tarantino film last night with Sally. The two of us were alone in the cinema apart from a group of teenagers, mostly boys, nerdy types as QT must have been, who behaved in a fairly respectful way and then went home, no doubt to squeeze their spots and dream about Butterfly.

The film had all the essential ingredients, raunchily attractive women in hot pants discussing sex, car chases, gory and apparently gratuitous violence, an intellectual's attention to tacky period detail, deliberate anachronisms, lap dancing - everything you expect and love (or hate) from Tarantino, in a particularly stripped-back form. Underpinning all this was an extraordinary simple but effective structure: essentially, the same story told twice but with all the difference in the world, which is where the film's moral purpose (because, of course, it has one) comes from.

I won't say any more, because I wouldn't want to spoil it for you, but it's extraordinary how something that is so much sheer fun in such a superficially mindless way can also be intellectually satisfying.

Now just let me squeeze that spot.