Femme Fatale didn't have much going for it this opening weekend in the face of an Eminem/Curtis Hanson team. After all, this was a movie with a supermodel-turned-actress Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in her first starring role and directed by the hugely inconsistent Brian De Palma. But those who did venture to watch this homage to older noir thrillers wouldn't be disappointed to see De Palma's handiwork behind the camera as we are lead along in a chase of stolen diamonds amidst Parisian settings.
The movie opens as the camera pans out to reveal a semi-naked blonde lying on the bed watching a scene from Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. A man walks into the room, barks orders at her and goes over the plan for the impending heist, and we don't even hear her voice -- let alone her see her face -- even as he slaps her around. The scene quickly shifts to the red carpet and we get to see the $10 million serpentine jewelry adorning the body of a model (Rie Rasmussen, a Danish model), and we follow her entrance from the perspective of press photographers.
The audience is reminded of De Palma's fascination with opening sequences, most notably of that in Snake Eyes, when we followed Nicholas Cage around on a Steadicam in a long shot that had almost no cuts. It was a scene filled with characters hitting their marks on cue with dialogues and action, while here in contrast it's very light on dialogue. And almost impossibly, De Palma outdoes even himself with one of the best opening acts in recent times. A predatory camera follows everyone involved in the heist, which in itself takes place as a bait-and-switch act during a most erotic lesbian love scene. It all goes very wrong; Laure Ash (Romijn-Stamos) makes off with the jewels, and we have ourselves a woman on the run.
During the course of the movie, De Palma makes more than a handful of references to Hitchcock, and, just like the man he dares to follow, De Palma is obsessed with having a blonde, icy and sensual woman as his lead. We follow Laure as she is mistaken for someone else and unexpectedly thrust into a life she could have never bargained for. Fast forward seven years into the future, when things start going very wrong; a paparazzo named Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas) comes into the mix. To give away any more would spring leaks in a plot filled with surprises.
While the script is strong enough to hold the movie on its own, the focus is on the way it's being shown to the audience. There is an extensive usage of English subtitles to translate a lot of the French dialogue that is spoken by the characters. It is even more intriguing to note that the standard thriller lines that are delivered by this means do not always coincide with someone actually speaking onscreen.
De Palma constructs a movie composed of detailed images, cautious to not snap the viewer's attention in the long lulls when there is no spoken dialogue. He journeys into an exercise in filmmaking where he is enjoying every move that he makes. Consider one scene where the camera looks out of Nicolas' apartment window, high up in a building. We see him in the distance on the street before he makes a sprint for this apartment, and the shot lazily pans back into and across his room and settles down in front of his computer, attentively watching the door as we await Nicolas' slow arrival. De Palma almost forces us to see and notice everything because he doesn't offer any other option. A medley of overhead crane shots, slo mo's and split screens keep us rooted to the action lest we dare to lose sight of the film.
If this was Romijn-Stamos' test as a good actress, then we will have to wait. Due to the nature of the movie, there are few scenes where she has to carry on prolonged conversations or portray an emotional state. What we do know is that she is a gorgeous tall blonde who is unbelievably sexy and is very convincing as a deceptive woman capable of guile and seduction to manipulate others (and not just men). After roles as the sideshow Mystique in X-Men and the dud Rollerball, she finally finds her niche as Victoria's Secret model turned bad and on the loose (if there ever could be something like that). In an industry being flooded with run-of-the-mill 20-something newcomers who all look and act alike, Romijn-Stamos lends class and aura to the movie.
De Palma on his part never shies away from playing with the sex and violence. He is bold enough to make a movie with largely unrecognized actors and deviant from the formulaic action, pyrotechnic blasts and standard one-liners. He breathes fresh air into the genre with a solid screenplay and a masterful and vivid portrayal of a movie that is made the way it is meant to be: filled with beautiful, moving images.
