Femme Fatale (DVD Review)

"C'mon, Nicolas. You don't have to lick my ass. Just fuck me!"

The last film (chronologically as well as literally) in my Brian DePalma festival. And it’s a fitting end. This is a cornucopia of a Greatest Hits package, and it couldn’t have come at a better time in his career. DePalma had been treading water a bit with Mission To Mars, Snake Eyes and Mission: Impossible to a lesser extent (true it was a hit and I really liked it, unlike it's hideous sequel). The last time he’d made a clearly identifiable DePalma film was the ludicrously entertaining Raising Cain, 10 years before.

Straight away into the film there’s a nod to the DePalma of old as we see a reflection of Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn) in a telelvision screen - which is showing Double Indemnity. Is she watching Fred McMurray or is she watching herself? And what are we watching? Are we watching her, or are we trying to work out the reason he’s placed Double Indemnity right up front? We won’t see her character clearly for another 5 minutes or so, until the diamond heist proper. She eludes us initially, as she hides behind her paparazzi camera.

This film has a great deal number of symbolism throughout the film. In fact, if you study the film, it may cause you to take DePalma to task for over-doing it. But that's his style, its in keeping with the crazy, playful tone of the film. Carrie wasn't subtle, neither was Body Double or The Fury. The plot is deceptively simple as it should be, but this is what allows him to have his sandpit to play in.

Possibly the most important aspect of Femme Fatale is it’s repeating of moments, situations or characters that force you to pay attention to the fact that things are not what they seem. The film constantly refers back to a poster labeled Déjà vu and that’s DePalma telling us that, sure, what we saw did happen before (such as the poster being put up itself), but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be paying attention. Soemthing's gonna happen here. Maybe it means we weren’t paying attention to begin with. Characters are never who they appear to be - Laure is the most obvious, but many secondary characters aren’t either. The girl wearing the diamond serpent during the heist turns out to be the same girl providing the passport to Laure. Nicolas (Antonio Banderas) pretends to be blind so that he can get a paparazzi photo of Laure on her return to Paris. He also pretends to be effeminate when he meets Laure in the hotel room. Parallel to this is the constant use of photographs, which repeat visual images, such as when the camera pans from a location at a chirch to Nicolas’ collage of photos of the same scene or the suprise snap of Laure from the car. Of course, when the film jumps ahead to seven years later, Nicolas is sitting in the same seat, still taking photos (but of course, they are a different type of photo now).

Like Body Double this movie is also about voyeurism. When DePalma switches to split screen several times during the movie it’s almost impossible to know where to look there's so much going on. And then he has characters taking photos within a split. Or people watching people via rear view mirrors. Or people looking at themselves in mirrors. Or people watching other people through binoculars. In fact, that’s two DePalma movies now where actor Gregg Henry has spied on people with binoculars (he also did it in Body Double).

Possibly the most overblown, overcooked motif in the film is water. Everybody loves to put water in their movies. It represents life. It represents birth. There are some cursory similarities between this film and Les Diaboliques as they both involve a re-birth of sorts from a bathtub. The constant use of water is overpowering in this film – the water effect on the 'fish tank', the boiling of a kettle, the bathtub that Laure falls asleep in and re-births from, the gathering storm and the rain, glasses being filled in hotels and restaurants, a champagne bottle being opened. Ye gads. Need I go on? When Nicolas bumps into Laure at the very end of the film and helps her up he offers “You look like you need a drink”. Of course the film then freezes on Laure’s quizzical face. Beautiful stuff. Just like a French movie (which by the way, there's more subtitling in this than I've ever seen in a DePalma movie).



There are other repeating moments such as Eriq Ebouaney still wearing his bloodied tux seven years later when he leaves prison. The strangest one is the green illimunated crucifix which I remember at least twice in the film: first during the hotel scene just before Laure is thrown off the balcony, and second, during the finale just before the truck ploughs into the two criminals. Maybe it’s simply some sort of harbinger that bad things are about to happen?

DePalma, of course, even references his own movies (and other people’s movies) as well. There’s a quite blatant Mission: Impossible homage during the heist as one of the gang is hiding in the vent with all his equipment. In fact, much of that opening heist has a very similar feel to the breaking into Langley sequence from that movie, without being too obviously derivative. More subtly, Nicolas wears a wire twice during this movie, which eventually becomes an important plot point, and it wasn’t until my third viewing of this film that I realized a wire tap was one of the most important plot elements of Blow Out. The movie within a movie (like Body Double's), The Quest, actually turns out to be a real movie.

Technically, the film is assured as ever for DePalma. Although most of the key creative crew were new to DePalma, they have provided able support. Bill Pankow, the only significant returning contributor provides exceptional editing, watch the great cut from the hotel room as the blind is pulled back to reveal the Cannes walkway. Thierry Arbogast (Luc Beeson’s regular cameraman) squeezes as much information into the 1.85 frame as possible, making the motifs as clear as possible with split screens and wide angles and rivets our attention to the smallest of details such as a key, a cat’s eyes or a dangling necklace. Ryuichi Sakamoto does not have the body of work of most composer’s, but his choices are often sublime. His work here is wonderfully playful (much like the movie itself), such as the Bolero style like music during the heist sequence.

Rebecca Romijn is hotter than Georgia asphalt in this movie, and that’s before we even get to her dancing scene. She does a surprisingly great job of imbuing sympathy for this thief, even when she starts killing people towards the end. Antonio Banderas is at his very best in this film (at least in English language films) and occasionally gives us little reminders of his power from his time with Pedro Almodovar. His arc from amateur photographer to paparazzi over seven years is nicely done (Of course, the other DePalma connection here is that his wife, Melanie Griffith starred in Body Double).

Femme Fatale is an entertaining movie that should keep the most jaded of critic glued to their box. If you're a DePalma nut like me, it's a must watch as it summarises his entire career from Sisters onward. It's just a shame this film was never released theatrically locally. The DVD is pretty and has some standard extras for a DePalma movie.