hall895 Femme Fatale is a movie which takes its time in really getting going but in the end it's worth the wait. It seemingly starts out as a straightforward heist movie. Rebecca Romijn plays Laure, who's part of a team of thieves who mean to steal a diamond-encrusted bra. They're going to take it right off the model who's wearing it at the Cannes Film Festival. Laure takes the model into the restroom where seduction is on the menu along with theft. But just when Laure and the model, now relieved of her diamonds, are really getting into one another things go awry. Laure disappears with the diamonds. Her partners in crime are not well pleased. Will Laure get away with it? Well, luckily for her a series of events too fortunate to really be believed allows her to get out of France. Less luckily events seven years later conspire to bring Laure back to Paris. Her old partners anxiously await her return. Laure's in trouble and she knows it. Extricating herself from this mess will require an elaborate plan. And a patsy. Enter unwitting photographer Nicolas who finds himself caught up in something beyond his imagination. And something quite dangerous.The opening heist sequence, while very well done, does go on perhaps a little longer than needed. And then the movie has to get Laure out of France and back again. All in all it takes quite a while for the movie to actually set itself up, to get to the real story. It's a complicated, at times convoluted, thriller. The movie is certainly intriguing enough to hold your interest but it does move rather slowly. But writer/director Brian De Palma manages to pay it off in the end. The movie's final twists and turns make the whole thing worthwhile. Everything comes together in quite smart fashion. Yes the movie got bogged down at times along the way but when you see the whole story you appreciate how well De Palma put the pieces of his puzzle together. The performances aren't great. Romijn is certainly not the most talented actress around. But she definitely looks the part of the sexy femme fatale. And her somewhat stiff acting actually kind of fits the role of the ice queen Laure. Antonio Banderas meanwhile seems somewhat bored with the role of Nicolas, he doesn't bring much energy to the proceedings. But he does make Nicolas sympathetic enough that you feel for the guy as Laure toys with him. And toy with him she does in so many ways. Laure is a woman not to be trifled with. Her story is compelling. The way De Palma presents that story borders on genius. Femme Fatale is a movie which keeps you guessing and which ultimately rewards you for sticking with it through its more mundane moments. Not an ordinary heist movie or a run-of-the-mill thriller. This is a movie with smarts, one which packs a surprising punch.

tomsview By the time Brian De Palma made "Femme Fatale", it seemed that he had been trying to remake Hitchcock's "Vertigo" in his own style for the past thirty years.Many of his films exhibit homage to Hitchcock – "Obsession", "Blowout", "Dressed to Kill" and "Body Double". However "Femme Fatale" has homage to spare. The doppelgangers, the voyeurism, the surveillance are all in evidence – not to mention a Hermannesque score by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Doubtless De Palma would have employed Herrmann himself if he had still been alive as he did in 1973's "Sisters" and 1975's "Obsession" – the most aptly named of all his films."Femme Fatale" is set in France and begins when Laure Ash, played by Rebecca Romijn Stamos, is involved in a jewel robbery during the Cannes Film Festival. Although security guards catch her associates, Laure escapes. After being injured, she is rescued by a couple who think she is their depressed and grieving daughter Lily. Taken to the couple's home, Laure is alone in the bath and watches undetected when the real daughter, also played by Romijn-Stamos, turns up and commits suicide. Laure then flees to America.Dropping in and out of the story is Nicholas Bardot, a paparazzi played by Antonio Banderas who is assembling a wall-sized montage of Paris composed of hundreds of standard-sized snapshots. For this project, he takes candid shots of Laure/Lily and other mysterious tall girls who could also be Laure/Lily – after all, if Hitchcock could make a classic with two Kim Novak's, De Palma must have thought just look what I can do with an endless number of Rebecca Romijn Stamos's.Not surprisingly, Antonio Banderas must have suspected that he was caught up in an over-dressed turkey and decided to have fun with the role. In a later sequence, he puts in a performance that rivals Martin Short's efforts as Franck Eggelhoffer in "Father of the Bride".Seven years later, Laure now assuming the identity of Lily, returns to Paris as the wife of the US Ambassador, played by Peter Coyote. Antonio Bandera's catches up with Laure/Lily and is ensnared in a complicated kidnap plot.Ex-model, Rebecca Romijn Stamos plays the whole thing pretty seriously. She is tall, blonde and blessed with killer cheekbones. Through the many character and mood changes she stays aloof and cool – she is a femme fatale after all.The finale sees Laure/Lily thrown off a bridge and into a predicament from which there can be no logical escape. So De Palma dispenses with logic. We are presented with the possibility that Laure/Lily has existed in a state of alternate reality – "Sliding Doors" comes to mind or even "Vanilla Sky". Then, the preceding story is shown to be a delusion seen from one person's point of view. Sound familiar? This was the premise behind "Mulholland Drive." It was David Lynch's get-out-of-jail card when he had worked his characters into a similarly tight corner.Despite all the 'inspiration' from other films, all could be forgiven if the ending actually worked. Alas, this is not the case. The ending is flat and we do feel cheated.Despite a glossy exterior there isn't much interior to "Femme Fatale". Although it divided the critics then and now, it all seems too silly to be taken seriously.

Desertman84 Femme Fatale is a mystery film stars Rebecca Romijn in the title role together with Antonio Banderas,Peter Coyote,Eriq Ebouaney and Rie Rasmussen.Director Brian De Palma blends the emotional netherworld of film noir with a stylish portrayal of life among the wealthy and powerful in Paris in this glossy thriller.Laure Ash is a beautiful but mysterious woman who has aligned herself with a small ring of jewel thieves, led by a man known as Black Tie, who has planned a major score during the Cannes Film Festival. Sexy model Veronica is scheduled to make a spectacular entrance for the screening of director Regis Wargnier's picture, wearing a body-hugging piece of jewelry worth a cool ten million dollars. Laure approaches the sexually adventurous Veronica and is able to seduce her, while at the same time stealing her diamond-studded outfit and replacing it with a carefully constructed counterfeit. Veronica, however, also makes off the loot without giving her partners their cut, and must go into hiding in order to avoid the wrath of Black Tie and his cohorts. Fate allows Laure to make her way to the United States, where in time she marries a powerful politician. Photographer Nicolas Bardo, however, had snapped a picture of Laure while she was on the lam years before, and when he takes an assignment to get a photo of the camera-shy woman, Laure realizes Nicolas is in a position to reveal her new identity to the world and put the bloodthirsty Black Tie back on her trail.The sheer pleasure of watching movies is celebrated in Brian De Palma's dazzling Femme Fatale. Working from his own intricate screenplay, De Palma indulges all of his trademark obsessions, upping the ante on Hitchcock with a Vertigo-like plot.De Palma's weaving a web of nonsense, but his plotting is so exuberantly absurd--and his frame so full of visual clues and relevant detail--that Femme Fatale becomes a joyous thrill ride at first encounter, and a crazily logical and grandly rewarding movie on subsequent viewings. In her best role to date, Romijnis everything you'd want a femme fatale to be, in a thriller that constantly challenges you to question what you're seeing.

moviesleuth2 This is a heist movie, and what you see isn't always what you get. Director Brian De Palma, a Hitchcock imitator is good at illustrating this misdirection; indeed anyone who has seen a Hitchcock thriller will be able to recognize some similarities. Unfortunately, character development is at level zero, and while that may be okay for the heist scenes, it renders the bulk of the film boring.I really can't say much about the plot without giving anything away, but I will say that the heist scenes are interesting, and generate a little bit of tension. However, with all the gloss and glamor evident, it still feels pretty trashy.I can't say much about the acting either, again not to give anything away, but also because none of the actors have much to work with. The actors are okay, but Rebecca Romijn-Stamos's part could have been better cast. She does however show a lot of herself and seems pretty comfortable doing it, which these days, says a lot (and severely limits the casting choices).This could have been a much better film had we had some vested interest in the characters. As it is, it's just bunch of nice looking scenes with a lot of trick mirrors.