Footnote on Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate and Margaret Qualley as Pussycat

in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

Quentin Tarantino's penchant for bare female feet in his films has been well-documented - one might think of Uma Thurman, as Mia Wallace, in Pulp Fiction (1994), or Bridget Fonda as Melanie in Jackie Brown (1997) - and for those who share this particular fetish Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) doesn't disappoint.    

There are multiple foot shots and both Margot Robbie, as Sharon Tate, and Margaret Qualley as Manson Family member Pussycat [1], have their shoes off for a considerable amount of screen time (1 min. 26 seconds and 1 minute respectively).

 

Tarantino has naturally been asked about this and, in recent a GQ interview, said:

 

"I don’t take it seriously. There’s a lot of feet in a lot of good directors' movies. [...] Like, before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel [...] And Hitchcock was accused of it [...]” [2] 

 

It's interesting to discover that Tarantino doesn't take accusations of being a foot festishist seriously - which isn't quite the same as denying his podophilia. And he's right to point out that other directors have also been accused of the same thing.  

 

I think film critics who complain that Tarantino's shots of feet don't serve any narrative purpose, either don't know (or don't understand) the history of cinema and its inherenty kinky aesthetic (founded as it is upon exhibitionism and voyeurism, for example). 

 

Nor might they know that the real Sharon Tate loved going barefoot in public and when she went to restaurants where this might be a problem, she would put rubber bands around her ankles in order to create the illusion that she was wearing sandals.  

 

And so, to suggest that Tarantino just includes these shots for his own sexual pleasure is, therefore, ignorant and insulting to him as a director. 

 

In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, for example, the scenes in which Tate puts her bare feet up on the back of the seat in front of her at the cinema and Pussycat puts her bare feet up on the dashboard of the car being driven by Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), tell us something significant; namely, that whereas Tate has successfully stamped her mark on the silver screen, Pussycat and her fellow Manson Family members will merely leave a nasty stain on popular culture, like the mark left by a squashed bug on a windscreen.

 

As to why it is that the soles of Tate's feet are dirty, whilst the soles of Pussycat's feet are clean in comparison, well, I'm no Christian Metz, but perhaps Tarantino is suggesting that the former will have her sins forgiven and her feet washed clean by the tears of love and laughter she inspires in others [3], whereas Pussycat, who has deliberately chosen to take the path of evil and follows in the devil's footsteps, is deceptively clean and attractive on the outside, but corrupt of soul and filthy of mouth [4].     

Notes

[1] The character of Pussycat is a composite figure inspired by several of Manson's real followers, including Ruth Ann Moorehouse, whom Manson frequently sent into the city to entice men with money back to Spahn Ranch, and Kathryn ('Kitty Kat') Lutesinger. 

 

[2] See the interview with Tarantino by John Phipps in GQ magazine (3 Sept 2021): click here. 

[3] To watch the scene with Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate at the movie theatre in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), click here. 

 

[4] To watch the scene with Margaret Qualley as Pussycat hitching a ride from Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), click here.