Femme Fatale

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Femme Fatale

51% Liked It
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Femme Fatale

Antonio Banderas, Edouard Montoute, Eriq Ebouaney, Fiona Curzon, Gregg Henry

A contemporary film noir about an alluring seductress named Laure Ash. A sultry former jewel thief and con woman trying to live the straight life, Laure is suddenly exposed to the world--and her enemi...( read more  read more... )es--by a voyeuristic photographer, Nicholas Bardo, who takes a sudden interest in her. Seen as a dangerous individual dressed in black, Nicholas is always hounding her, attempting to reveal Laure for what she really is--a born manipulator. As Nicholas tries to determine her true intentions, he begins to uncover some dangerous secrets. Her shadowy life of deceit had also spawned vengeful co-conspirators who will neither forget, nor forgive her lies. Laure's shady past comes back to haunt her, and soon thereafter, Nicholas becomes ensnared in her surreal quest for revenge.

Id: 10895999

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Femme Fatale Recent Reviews
  • Deano78
    June 2, 2009
    Deano78
    A pretty decent sultry thriller directed by Brian DePalma. A jewel thief tries to cover her past but a chance photo of her alerts the people she has crossed before. Enjoyable if not quite a classic but I do like the ending and Rebecca Romijn suits the role to a T before her succe...( read more)ss as Mystique in the X-Men series.
  • EarthlyAlien
    April 15, 2009
    EarthlyAlien
    Underrated De Palma thriller. Inventive, elegant, fun, intoxicatingly sexy, violent, self-indulgent and maddening. The film has the high-buffed gloss and high-octane jolts you expect of De Palma, but what makes it transporting is that it's also one of the smartest, most pleasurab...( read more)le expressions of pure Film love to come from an American director in years. Nearly surreal, dabbling in French, this is no simple film, and you'll be taking a risk if you choose to see it. I enjoyed the ride (bumps and all), creamy depth, and ultimate theme. It's erotic, kinky, preposterous, labyrinthine, and aesthetically superb. Romijn drinks sexual sweat in with every breath.
  • stopitgoaway
    August 17, 2008
    stopitgoaway
    "Femme Fatale" is best understood as a game played by Brian De Palma and appreciated by knowing cineastes. It's not about story or characters, but about the construction and manipulation of art.

    Antonio Banderas plays Nicolas Bardo, a photographer who has turned his back on ph...( read more)otographing celebrities. He now spends his time living in an apartment, making huge composite images by arranging tiny photographs. The Bardo character, in many ways, is Brian De Palma. At war with Hollywood storytelling (which is fuelled by celebrity) De Palma takes these multiple images and weaves them into a tapestry until a final image is made. The point is that the final image is not reality. It is the artists recreation and completely false.

    At the end of the film, Bardo completes his masterpiece by inserting a little white figure (of Laura) onto his wall. The figure doesn't belong there, Bardo simply chooses to put it there. Thematically, "Femme Fatale" ends on the same note. Noir fatalism is thwarted by a completely arbitrary, totally ILLOGICAL and cosmically IMPOSSIBLE moment of editing whereby De Palma redeems his hero and kills off her opponents.

    Critics call this sequence implausible. But De Palma's point is that it doesn't have to be plausible. Bardo puts the white figure on his wall because he wants to. Similarly, De Palma ends the film as he does, because he wants to. He shows us Laura's depressing noir dream and then rescues her from it. He makes it clear that he is redeeming her and willing this positive ending into existence solely because he as an artist (noir God), has the power to do so.

    This flips the usual noir logic. If Kubrick's "The Killing" highlights the deterministic law of the universe (Clay's plan crumbling to pieces all because of a random poodle), De Palma's "Femme Fatale" highlights the power of the artist, able to do recreate a universe entirely devoid of cosmic law.

    This theme is also highlighted by the use of the name "Bardo", a Tibetan word meaning "intermediate state". A state between life and death. Over the course of the film, Bardo will be caught between life and death, as De Palma toys with killing him. Bardo's existence or artistic merit is down to an artist's mere whim.

    Everything else about De Palma is present in Femme Fatale: the voyeur and his object, the representation inside the representation, the original and its fake copy, the doubled characters, key episodes built from multiple points of views, the elaborate camera work.

    Watch as De Palma's camera continuously misleads our eyes, giving the hidden predominance over the shown, until we are forced to separate in our minds the real from its representation and to connect the different pieces into a "sense".

    This technique comprises the film watching experience as a whole, and is what De Palma's films are essentially about, from Jack Terry's reconstruction of a truth with the aid of montage in "Blow Out", to Santoro's investigations of a crime from partial testimonies in "Snake Eyes".

    This theme, the division between reality and image, has grown increasingly important for De Palma. His last five movies ("Redacted", "Dahlia", "Mission Impossible", "Snake Eyes," and "Mission to Mars,") were all concerned with how we see and watch movies. He is obsessed with reminding us that information is not the same thing as knowledge.

    "Snake Eyes" opened with an unbroken tracking shot that laid out the plot. The rest of the movie was a demonstration of why everything we had seen in that sequence was a lie. The opening sequence of "Mission: Impossible" showed us Tom Cruise's crew of agents being picked off one by one. We had already seen each of those murders, though, in nearly subliminal blips during the movie's credit sequence (information without knowledge). "Black Dahlia" and "Redacted" similarly deal with a search for truth amongst an image bank of lies.

    "Femme Fatale" begins with a long heist sequence. Throughout this sequence, allusions are made to "Snake Eyes" (eg- the literal "serpent camera" and the object of the heist, a snake shaped piece of gold), De Palma effectively saying: "I'm lying to you. The camera is a snake and not to be trusted." Note the film "Est - Ouest" showing as the heist goes on. Another stream-of-consciousness film with an unreliable narrator.

    The rest of "Femme Fatale" takes a "dream within a film" approach, (foreshadowed in opening shot). De Palma sets the dream sequence up with careful details: the storm, the clock (Time: 3:33), the water running, Laura sinking. Signs that would eventually emerge all the way through, emphasising the surreal atmosphere of Laura's adventure.

    From here on, logic will be put aside as De Palma's mise-en-scene develops into pure form. Everything is disconnected, dialogue makes no sense (at some points it's dubbed without even following the actors' lips), time jumps back and forth etc.

    During the dream, Laura will embody different female archetypes, all traceable in film history and particularly in De Palma's films. She's Kim Novak in "Vertigo" and also Melanie Griffith's prostitute of "Body Double" and so on and so on.

    The majority of De Palma's films have dream sequences. Even a "serious" film like 'Casualties of War' ends with a character waking up on a train, realising that the whole film was a nightmare. Why does De Palma feel the need to insert this? My guess is that he doesn't want his films to be seen as "real". They exist in a wholly metaphysical space.

    As usual with a De Palma film, critics and audiences rejected Femme Fatale. But this is a brilliant film, it's only flaw being an unimaginatively shot (by De Palma standards) heist sequence.
  • harrycaul
    January 24, 2008
    harrycaul
    This is, without doubt, one of Brian De Palma's greatest achievements, an incredibly rich and playful movie which immeasurably rewards repeated viewings. Basically, you get out of it what you put in. If you've got your wits about you, an open mind and a keen pair of eyes, you're ...( read more)in for a treat. Beneath its ludicrous exterior there lurks as intelligent a film as you could wish to see, a film which, refreshingly, credits its audience with the ability to understand it without spoon-feeding. If you've been paying close enough attention, the controversial late twist triumphantly validates innumerable carefully laid glimpses of the truth; you ought to feel exhilarated rather than cheated, eager to hit the rewind button in search of further clues. In De Palma's enchanted world: fish-tanks mimic overflowing baths, advertising posters offer vital pointers, casually seen faces become woven into the story and time stands still. As a Parallel Universe thriller, it's smarter, wittier, more inventive and more skilfully told than "Run, Lola, Run" et al. Ironically, this masterpiece sank without a trace in the UK and is hard to locate on DVD.
  • wellmeetagain
    January 14, 2008
    wellmeetagain
    I know I liked this more than most. I also know that DePalma can overdo it, however I thought he kept this one together and made it work. Recommended for those who like a bit of suspense and some twists.
  • marcellmazzoni
    January 2, 2010
    marcellmazzoni
    Nice movie situated in France.
  • jam233
    December 13, 2009
    jam233
    Very stylish thriller, it doesn't always work, but it does have some very memorable scenes. It looks good and has a professional look to it. Good cinematography.
  • ythelastman89
    December 9, 2009
    ythelastman89
    The complete and utter downfall of Brian DePalma. I have no idea what he was thinking here. It is awkwardly sexual and tasteless. The characters are ridiculous and completely shallow. There was no depth or originality. It just looks like most thrillers of the time.
  • aniacel
    October 31, 2009
    aniacel
    the best was scene on the billiard table
    but sexy generally
  • fm014
    October 18, 2009
    fm014
    Well, there is beauty to be found in the scenery and the cast (looks expensive) - but in the end the plot is just weird.
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