#or nurturing

1. A 6′5′‘, over 200lb KGB agent trained and ranked in at least 2 martial art styles with severe (and at this point, on screen) violent rage issues.

2. A 5′6′‘ barely 113 lb (according to her profile) East German woman who may or may not have had literally any training at spy craft or self defense (her profile says “no combat experience” at the end of the movie, so I’m going with no, Gaby had no or limited training/experience in a fight).

We’re not even going to touch on the sheer terror of an East Berlin woman looking at a Russian soldier in the 1960s. If you don’t know the incredibly fraught and ugly history that stretches between Gaby and Illya’s people, then at least know that it involves a lot of death, rape, and paranoid betrayal.

But let’s stick with what we see on screen. Where are the players in this scene? In a hotel room, undercover, doing a mission that involves Gaby’s family and has high stakes for the world in general. A couple of hours before this scene, Gaby witnesses the giant KGB agent who chased her through her hometown nearly lose his shit and come close to beating up (or even straight up murdering) two armed men. He does this even though he knows those actions will blow his cover and at best endanger their objective, at worse endanger their lives. Now whether Gaby knows anything about Illya’s “psychosis” at this point is unclear (I personally think that Waverly has probably already slipped her at least some information about the men who are dragging her around), but she can see him visibly slipping out of control, has to physically step between him and a loaded gun. She’s aware that he’s not stable, whatever else she knows.

So here she is, alone in a hotel room with him, expected to sleep while he is only a few steps away. And this is where the power dynamics really come into play. Ask yourself: “Who can leave?” We already know Illya could get up and walk out of this room if he wants to. In fact, he does exactly that a few scenes later, leaving Gaby behind while he goes to the factory. You know who cannot leave this situation? Gaby. If she puts on her coat and says “I’m going for a walk,” Illya is either going to A) stop her or B) go with her. He’s not going to let her out of his sight unless it’s *his* choice. Illya can leave this situation. Gaby cannot. So that’s now at least three power points on Illya’s side, none on Gaby’s. She’s outgunned, outclassed, and frankly, trapped.

This is the scene where I started to really like her character, because faced with what must honestly be her worst nightmare (trapped with a giant, violent Russian KGB officer who knows her family history), Gaby decides....to poke at him. She tries to get him drunk. She plays loud music while he’s concentrating. She dances, she grins, she blocks his way, she makes him dance when he doesn’t want to, and yeah, she makes him slap himself. Twice. (Does anyone think it’s coincidence that the thugs slap Illya twice, and Gaby makes him slap himself twice? I don’t.)

I keep seeing people comment “if it were the other way around, the audience would be horrified,” and guys, YES. That’s the point. Illya has all the power in this scene. All of it. He’s powerful, he’s trained, he’s got control issues, and at this point he’s not acting like her partner or even like a man who respects her as a person. He’s her warden, and a terrifying one. When Illya threatens to put her over his knee, we as a modern audience know it’s a funny line, that we will never actually see him raise a hand in violence to her because hitting a defenseless woman on screen would make him Not A Good Guy. But remember, Gaby doesn’t know she’s in a humorous spy hijinks movie. She doesn’t know that Illya loves his mother or cracks jokes with his American counterpart or will gently carry her to bed when she passes out. She doesn’t know that he’s really a sweetheart underneath the scary exterior. When he threatens to strike her, she believes him.

This is why I think Gaby charging him gets Illya’s attention, by the way. And why the next morning, his treatment of her is noticeably different. He’s no longer giving her that dead-eyed flat smile that he delivers in the clothing shop. He’s not steering her around like a doll. When he says “congratulations” about their fake engagement, it’s a joke meant to include her and not a sarcastic sort of verbal backhand like it was the first time he said it. His smile is more genuine, he teases and jokes with her, he opens the car door and waits for her to get in instead of just shoving her around the way he has been up to this point. He’s treating her less like ‘an asset’ and more like a partner.

And Gaby herself is still prickly and standoffish and uncertain about him, but she actually talks to him instead of merely glaring at him silently, and later she even argues with him, possibly even teases him a little (depending on how you read her commentary about playboy Alexander). Because that whole scene in the hotel room shifted the power dynamics for both of them. Gaby learned that she could push and irritate and even attack Illya and still wake up the next morning without broken bones. Illya realized that Gaby was not just some silly girl to be tolerated and ‘handled’ until the mission was complete. The audience learns that Gaby’s response to fear is to pick a fight with it, and Illya’s response to a spirited if ill-advised drunken tackle is...to develop a massive crush? YMMV on that one (I ship it, tho).