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Review by Harvey Karten
2½ stars out of 4
Brian De Palma is out to get Lynched this time around with a
plot that could have been inspired by "Mulholland Drive. Though
"Femme fatale," which could be subtitled "Camera Shy," looks
more like Mulholland Drivel except for the opening scene when De
Palma puts Topkapi into Cannes, the film still has the intrigue
evoked by a gorgeous young woman reinventing herself after
double-crossing some mean-looking guys who never realized that
diamonds are a girl's, not a boy's, best friend. The opening twenty
minutes or so, which is (thankfully) almost bereft of dialogue,
show De Palma as the masterful visual stylist he is, taking us
through an intricate jewel robbery at the Cannes Film Festival of
2001. Fewer eyes are on Sandrine Bonnaire than on a woman in
the audience with a $10 million outfit that leaves her this close to
nudity, a serpentine hunk of jewelry barely covering her most
interesting spots and making her the target of thieves like Black
Tie (Eriq Ebouaney) and Racine (Edourd Montoute) who are more
interested in her attire than in what it barely covers.
After the heist, Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), whose job
is to remove the serpent from its Eve (which she does in a
remarkable and gratuitously sexy scene), flees with the treasure,
chased by those two meanies who don't like to be double-crossed
out of their share of the $10 mil. Stashing herself and the loot in
Paris, Laure winds up through an almost ludicrous set of
circumstances to be in the home of one Lily (also Rebecca
Romijn-Stamos), taking her identity when Lily commits suicide.
Running into a successful entrepreneur, Bruce Hewitt Watts
(Peter Coyte), on a flight to the U.S., she winds up back in France
when Watts becomes the American ambassador to the City of
Lights, is captured in a photograph by paparazzo Nicolas Bardo
(Antonio Banderas), and juggles Nicolas, Black Tie, and Racine in
an intricate and often absurdly detoured plan to stay alive.
Borrowing badly from Hitchcock, De Palma punctuates the early
scenes with Ryuichi Sakamoto's ominous and unsubtle music to
punch up the suspense, but while the director's visual style is
often captivating, he falls back on his usual signature by
embracing the looniness of both "Body Double" (about an actor
obsessed with a beautiful woman he spots through a telescope);
and "Dressed to Kill" (psycho-like killer stalks two women); and
the particularly unpleasant violence of his "Scarface" remake.
Dialogue, mercifully spare, is not this film's strong point and
Antonio Banderas looks as bewildered in real life as he pretends
to be in the story. Yet for fans of hoots like "Showgirls"-those of
us who like particularly violent scenes, some lapdancing and sex
with all its gyrations, and a beatiful face like that of Cosmo and
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Rebecca Romijn-Stamos: and
you don't mind stories that reward technique and visual impact
without much moral sense; this is not a pic to write off.
Copyright © 2002 Harvey Karten
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out of 4
