Dear. He calls her—what kind of dangerous secret agent is such a softie that he treats little old ladies so gently?
To me, this is a hugely important character moment, because it shows that Illya knows he’s fucking terrifying, and he doesn’t want to be.
As an armed KGB man bursting into a little old lady’s home in the middle of the night, he’d be terrifying even if he wasn’t ten feet tall. And he knows what that’s like, because he was on the other side of it when he was ten and they came for his father.
Furthermore, I read the hotel room scene with Gaby–the drunk-dancing pyjamas scene–much the same way. She’s not really acting like she’s scared, but she probably should be: he’s big enough to break her in half, a representative of an occupying force, and, at least according to his dossier, psychotic, and here she’s being made to share a hotel room with him and pretend to be his fiancee. So he bends over backwards to be as nonthreatening as possible, to the extent of letting her slap him in the face with his own hands. Twice.
Illya’s staple wardrobe - let’s exclude the suits he wears as part of his cover - is no slouch either. While nowhere as fancy as Napoleon’s, those are still pretty fine classic pieces he wears in the circumstances: turtlenecks from JohnSmedley, jackets from Ralph Lauren and Baracuta.
I only hope that Gaby was not actually using a Hermes scarf to keep her hair back while in the chop shop. Ahahaha.
Mostly, suit lust aside, I’m also lusting over Victoria’s wardrobe. Sadly, the suggested clothingmatches make me weep. I may need to whip out the trusty ol’ sewing machine.
Anonymous asked: oh god while we're on the topic of napoleon & agency how about how his response to getting fucking drugged is "i'll just lay down & make myself comfortable then, been here before" TALK ABOUT CLINGING TO SCRAPS OF AUTONOMY
(x) Honestly the gender politics in this film is some curious stuff. Reverse the genders and both this scene and Napoleon bedding Victoria becomes infinitely more sinister. Same goes for Gaby slapping Illya. From start to end, Victoria treats Napoleon like a plaything, an object, something to be toyed with.
illya upon seeing the woman he’s attracted to for likely the last time: teary resignation
illya upon being reminded he needs to maybe kill napoleon, the man he spent the whole movie arguing with: LITERALLY DESTROYS THE ENTIRE HOTEL ROOM
YES. Ahahaha.
That said, my take on Illya wrecking the room is more along the lines of Illya feeling ~betrayed, because he thinks that the trust which he and Napoleon had started to share was just a ruse by Napoleon to get the disk first.
Then Napoleon tosses him his father’s watch, and Illya realises that what they have, this indescribable, fragile thing between the two of them, is actually ~real. He feels foolish as he fumbles the watch back onto his wrist, but when he looks up to Napoleon’s indulgent (if understandably also rather wary) smile, he knows that he’s forgiven.
Napoleon will bring this incident up again every now and then, mostly to tease Illya about his temper. Illya will scowl that they wouldn’t be where they are right now if not for my father’s watch , before looking away with the faintest of smiles.