Femme Fatale Review
Posted by Ashish on 11.11.2002
A lesbian sex scene can carry a movie only so far...
Femme Fatale
Release Date: November 6th, 2002
Brian De Palma has plenty of great films to his credit (Dressed To Kill, Body Double) but he also has plenty of duds (Mission To Mars), and Femme Fatale is one of them. He is one of those directors who either hits or misses, and has no line in between, and this atrocious “thriller” is a big miss.
His latest suspense thriller (and his first film in 4 years), Femme Fatale, stars the gorgeous Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as Laure Ash. The film opens in midst of a jewelry heist at the Cannes Film Festival involving Ash and two of her partners. Ash’s role is to get one of the film stars (and all the jewels she happens to be wearing) into the bathroom, get her to take off the jewels, and have lesbian sex with her. That is basically the only drawing point of this illogical, contrived thriller: the sexual content (Stamos is, in one word, hot).
The heist does not go as planned for Ash’s partners. Why? Because Ash ends up with all the jewels and escapes, with the rest of the movie focusing around Ash fleeing from her partners who want revenge and the jewels. She hides out in an apartment where, believe it or not, a woman that looks exactly like her also lives. How convenient. And to make matters better for Ash, the clone commits suicide and Ash has a nice new life to take over. Oh and let’s not forget that the other woman also happened to have plane tickets to America, so Ash conveniently takes those as well and heads to the states.
The film then moves forward 7 years later. Ash (under her new name) is now the wife of the French-American ambassador (played by Peter Coyote). The two head to France where Ash is photographed and thereby exposed. Her partners become aware of her return and the chase is back on. Yippee.
Antonio Banderas plays the photographing paparazzo and doesn’t add much to a film that is so desperate for interesting plot turns that it makes up whatever it has to whether it makes sense or not.
One of the biggest problems right now with De Palma films is that they seem to come off as blatant copies of his older, more successful films. Many of the things that worked in those pictures come off as rehashed this time around.
De Palma’s obsession with Alfred Hitchcock also continues this time around, as he tries to out-do the master in every scene. His constant focus on trying to be innovative in his directorial style in almost every minute of this film ends up becoming too much to swallow. Sometimes less is more.
Rebbeca Romijn-Stamos could very well be one of the most beautiful women on the planet, but this role is not for her. She simply does not convince the audience that she is a intelligent, tough woman and probably would be better suited in chick flicks.
The 411: This is another film from Brian De Palma that tries way too hard. The entire plot has little coherence and is just completely illogical. Stamos is red hot, but does not fit her role properly while Banderas isn’t really given much of an opportunity to do anything with his role. De Palma needs to focus more on writing a good script and making a good film before worrying so much about trying to use his flashy directorial style in every scene. Lesbian sex can only go so far.
