[quote=@tex]
[@Fabricant451]

	Although I don't think that Bill's actions ever infringed on Beatrice's ability to make choices of her own volition, save for the moment when he tried to have her [i]killed[/i], I can see where the line's being drawn. What I don't understand is how this correlates with the tone and additional themes to construct an effective dialogue on feminism, whether it be in support, descriptive, [i]what-have-you.[/i]

	The story was never about Beatrice regaining or emphasizing her independence, it revolved around protecting her daughter. Bill's jealous attempt on her life does not make him an appropriate analogue for reasonable feminist issues. It makes him an abusive ex, a person who seeks control [i]not because he wants to manipulate women,[/i] but because he's a vindictive douche that wants to validate his own emotions. Of course, he's shown to be in the wrong, simply because his reason for revenge was [i]unjust.[/i] 

	Gender does not play a major role in the plot of Kill-Bill. The only possible thing you could relate to Tarentino's reason for making the main character a woman, is the motivation of her wanting to rescue her child. Remove the child, and suddenly everyone in the movie is a vindictive douche with shitty motivations. Suddenly, the main character is an absolute fucking moron and has no reasonable motivation to go around murdering her former colleagues. That child is the key to why Kill Bill isn't a completely stupid movie.
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The story was absolutely about Beatrix regaining her independence, it was one of the main beats of the movie. That's the entire subtext of the revenge. She will literally never be free until she kills the Deadly Vipers - Bill was still sending Elle Driver to kill Beatrix in a coma until the code of honor had him change his heart. Her motivation has nothing to do with her child. She doesn't even know her child is alive until the end. Her entire motivation is revenge and the freedom and independence that will bring her. So long as Bill and the Vipers are alive she'll never truly be free. It's arguable that it's a hollow belief given that two of them have all but retired from the life (and yet both of them still attempt to kill her) but it's the driving force of the entire movie. Yes, it's a revenge movie, but that doesn't mean that's the only interpretation. 

The fact that Beatrix made the [i]choice[/i] to leave the assassin's life behind by means of faking her death only to have Bill track her down, deem her fiance a jerk, then kill them out of a warped idea of love and sick jealousy shows that she wouldn't be free to actually live her life and make choices like getting married again until Bill was out of the picture. Even when she goes on to meet Bill in part two, his justification is less an explanation and more an attempt at manipulation how he did it out of love and heartbreak and how [i]killing her fiance and attempting to kill her[/i] was just an [i]overreaction[/i]. 

How this whole arc of the powerful male figure holding the woman back to the point where she has to take unexpected, often drastic, measures to better her life doesn't count as feminist is baffling. That's literally been a core of feminist film theory for decades. There's no obvious "THIS IS A BLATANT ALLEGORY FOR THE WAY WOMEN ARE SEEN IN SOCIETY" because that's not the kind of movie it is, it's a revenge movie that is an homage to martial arts movies with a side of feminist themes as garnish. A movie doesn't have to specifically be or say something about feminism to be a feminist movie - hence why I said 'A feminist film is not the same thing as a film about feminism.' Kill Bill, by accident or otherwise, is a feminist film.