De Palma fools around with split screens and slo-mo, but no amount of cinematic artifice can varnish over the fact that this is simply a bad film.
Femme Fatale (2002)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:133
Fresh:64
Rotten:69
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: The thriller Femme Fatale is overheated, nonsensical, and silly.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for strong sexuality, violence and language
Runtime: 1 hr 54 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Theatrical Release:Nov 6, 2002 Wide
Box Office: $6,543,347
Synopsis: Director Brian De Palma returns to familiar terrain with FEMME FATALE, a loopy, sexy thriller that plays like a "greatest hits" of the controversial director's tics, tricks, and obsessions. Here... Director Brian De Palma returns to familiar terrain with FEMME FATALE, a loopy, sexy thriller that plays like a "greatest hits" of the controversial director's tics, tricks, and obsessions. Here the story follows a beautiful seductress (Rebecca Romjin-Stamos) who betrays her cohorts during an elaborate diamond heist at the Cannes Film Festival, then disappears to America under the stolen identity of a dead French girl to whom she bears an uncanny resemblance. Seven years later she returns to Paris when her American husband (Peter Coyote) accepts a position as French ambassador. That's when Antonio Banderas, as a goofy photographer, enters the picture and becomes her lover and dupe in another elaborate scheme. Along the way there's steamy lesbianism, misogynistic violence, split-screens, double-crosses, time loops, VERTIGO-style stalking, a hot striptease, and plenty of dark comedy and sly homage to other films, all in the classic De Palma tradition. His fans should be thrilled, as this harkens back to the director's DRESSED TO KILL, BLOW OUT, and BODY DOUBLE days. Novices should prepare to throw credibility to the wind and just enjoy the stylistic bravado, the twists and turns, and the ravishing Stamos--who backs up her beauty with a captivating, enigmatic performance. [More]
Starring: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Gregg Henry
Starring: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Gregg Henry, Rie Rasmussen, Eriq Ebouaney
Director: Brian De Palma
Director: Brian De Palma
Screenwriter: Brian De Palma
Producer: Tarak Ben Ammar, Marina Gefter
Composer: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Studio: Warner Bros.
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Reviews for Femme Fatale
A fellow critic sitting a few seats down leaned over to me and muttered “This has got to be a parody, right?” while dozens of ‘normal moviegoers’ were content to giggle at the wackily earnest exchanges offered onscreen.
It's a sexy, violent, glamorous, sinfully funny movie with a surface as hard and brilliant as diamonds.
The director's many dodges and turns add up to little more than a screenful of gamesmanship that's low on both suspense and payoff.
Far more absorbing and tantalizing than most of the plodding, overworked thrillers the studios churn out these days.
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 pleasurable expressions of pure movie love to come from an American director in years.
What is it about Paris that brings out so much visual artistry in nearly great American filmmakers while making their storytelling instincts implode like a fallen souffle?
Feels like nothing quite so much as a middle-aged moviemaker's attempt to surround himself with beautiful, half-naked women.
When [De Palma's] bad, he's really bad, and Femme Fatale ranks with the worst he has done.
Inventive, fun, intoxicatingly sexy, violent, self-indulgent and maddening.
A uniquely De Palma kind of effluence, an exercise in auteur self-parody.
The story the movie tells is of Brian De Palma's addiction to the junk-calorie suspense tropes that have all but ruined his career.
[De Palma's] showy style can't compensate for ludicrous plot contrivances, wooden acting and laughable dialogue.
I enjoyed this one because, rather than nitpick the director's usual lapses in logic, I allowed the sexy visuals and sumptuous set design to wash over me.
Maybe all the pieces of a truly good film noir are here, but the filmmaker has opted simply to toss them into the air and let them fall where they may.
You don't need to take Femme Fatale seriously in order to derive great pleasure from what De Palma is up to here.
Once, De Palma seemed like a director intoxicated with the possibilities of movies; now he just seems in need of intervention.
Latest News for Femme Fatale
July 28, 2006:
Trailer Bulletin: Hartnett, Scarlett & Swank in De Palma's "Black Dahlia"
Master of suspense / veteran storyteller / admirer of Hitchcock / Brian De Palma has a new film on the horizon, his first since 2002's "Femme Fatale," and it looks to... More...
July 20, 2005:
Get Your First Beautifully Gruesome Peek at "Slither"
Chalk it up to a relatively slow news week, but the crew over at CHUD.com just got an exclusive peek at this crazy gory freaked-out monster from an upcoming horror flick called... More...
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