Femme Fatale (2002)
Directed by Brian De Palma
Written by Brian DePalma
Starring Rebecca Romijn, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyle, Gregg Henry
Release Date November 6th, 2002
Published November 5th, 2002
Whether you like Brian De Palma or not you have to respect a director who so often presses the boundaries of good taste, decency and filmmaking. So many of De Palma's films are unqualified classics simply for his willingness to push the envelope of filmmaking style and trashy storytelling. Films like Dressed To Kill and Raising Cain are such wildly fantastical slasher pictures that the viewer doesn't know whether to laugh or recoil in horror. Even when De Palma's risk-taking style fails (Snake Eyes), the failure is at least memorable.
Who can't remember that awesome 5-minute tracking shot at the opening of Snake Eyes with De Palma's voyeuristic floating camera following Nicholas Cage through an Atlantic City casino? Pure style. In Femme Fatale the De Palma's trademark stylishness is in place but much like Snake Eyes, it's a memorable failure.
The femme fatale of the title is Laure Ash played by supermodel Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. Laure is a professional thief who, with the help of two nameless black guys, plots to steal a million dollars in diamonds. In typical De Palma style the diamond heist is a trashy, exciting plot as the diamonds in question are being worn by a model attending the Cannes Film Festival. In fact, the diamond and gold outfit is basically the only thing the model is wearing.
This is no trouble for Laure who has already made contact with the model and is planning on seducing the diamonds right off the models body. In a scene only De Palma could write, Stamos seduces the woman and has sex with her in a bathroom stall, and then uses the model to help her double cross her collaborators and walk out with the diamonds herself. The less I tell you about the diamond plot the better.
From there Laure has to get out of the country before her partners find her which leads her into a mistaken identity plot where she is confused for a grieving widow and taken in by the girl’s parents. While in the care of her pseudo parents she happens across a plane ticket and passport belonging to her lookalike. Boarding the plane with her new identity, she meets an American businessman played by veteran character guy Peter Coyote.
Cut to seven years later, Laure has married Coyote whose character is returning to Paris as the new American Ambassador. As Laure attempts to fly under the radar to avoid her past, her low profile attracts the attention of the French tabloids. One of the papers hire a paparazzi photographer played by Antonio Banderas to capture a photo of the new Ambassador's wife. He of course gets the photo, which is not surprisingly seen by her former partners. This sets off a chain of events that have Laure posing as an abused wife to lure Antonio into a plot she has designed to bilk her husband out of ten million dollars. Whatever happened to the diamonds is anyone's guess.
It’s not surprising that Stamos is the film’s biggest problem. As an actress, Stamos makes for sensational eye candy but she is completely overmatched as an actress. That is likely the reason why though she is the lead she has far less dialogue than her co-stars. She is never once believable as the badass manipulator that the character is supposed to be and she never projects the intellect a character like this would need to make it as far as she does.
De Palma is in rare form with his trashy take on classic Hitchcock. There is De Palma's legendary use of tracking shots and his unique use of amazing French architecture. The colors that saturated the France of Amelie are dimmed by rain covered streets in Femme Fatale but are nearly as vivid. De Palma is in love with his camera, floating it everywhere and using extensive close-ups to raise the tension of the film. If Stamos' performance weren't so chuckle-inducing, Femme Fatale could have been a style-over-substance cult classic. As it is, Femme Fatale is a missed opportunity for the director who lives for every opportunity, successful or otherwise.
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