Femme Fatale

FEMME FATALE

Rating: B+

Your typical softcore porn suspense romantic comedy.

It's hard to describe the plot accurately without giving too much away, but suffice it to say things start off with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos conspiring to steal 10 million dollars worth of diamonds from a wealthy film director during the annual Cannes film festival. Some observations:

I have no idea how to pronounce Romijn-Stamos.
The diamonds are embedded in gold jewelry worn by the director's girlfriend, the largest piece being in the form of a snake which wraps her torso as a bra. If a bra's function is to cover private areas and control breast jiggle, I couldn't help noticing she didn't get her money's worth in either respect.
Romijn-Stamos separates the diamonds from their wearer by pretending(?) to be one of those women who just hasn't been with the right man yet and seducing her. Shortly after, we learn the girlfriend is actually in on the plot. But R-S's cohorts don't know this, which means their original assumption that R-S would be successful is incredibly shaky at best. It's one of those plot weaknesses we're not meant to think about.
Director Brian DePalma spends most of his time figuring out ways to show us Romijn-Stamos in her underwear. (For those of you interested in seeing her out of her underwear, there's some of that too.) I guess for a film titled Femme Fatale, this is partly just meeting audience expectations. If you think Romijn-Stamos is the hottest thing since sliced bread, you'll probably be forgiving of the movie's many plot contrivances. If not, you're in for a looong evening.
This is one of those films that has a subtitle reading "Seven Years Later." Twice, actually, although one could argue the second time doesn't count.
I could swear I detected some of Krzysztof Kieslowski's influence in the entire proceedings.
The characters in this film smoke way, way, too much for it to be healthy.

Of course, wherever there's a femme fatale, there has to be some unfortunate honest chap who gets ensnared in her web of deceit. Here the honor falls to Antonio Banderas, an out-of-work Parisian photographer who's offered a lucrative sum to snap a picture of our elusive heroine. He succeeds, but later regrets his actions and becomes obsessed with helping correct the trouble he's caused her. That's when his problems really begin.

Later events reveal things aren't what they seem, which is par for the course in a film of this type. But the interesting twist is that DePalma drops us subtle and not so subtle clues along the way. If you haven't seen the film yet, or plan on seeing it again, pay attention to the people Romijn-Stamos casually encounters on her original trip to the motel room to get a fake passport. Then later on the Paris street, take a careful look at the poster which is replaced by the one featuring Banderas' photo of her. Does the person in the first poster resemble anyone we know? And what is that person doing? And that's all I'll say about that.

I enjoyed this movie, while at the same time I realize it requires a lot of concessions from its audience. I wasn't kidding about the romantic comedy aspects either - you'll see what I mean at the film's end. Basically, I tend to find films where you have to watch for clues along the way a lot of fun. And Rebecca Romijn-Stamos can dance in her underwear for me any day she pleases.

There was one item which completely confused me which I might as well mention here. When Romijn-Stamos is first settling down in the bathtub, there's clearly some type of insect (possibly a cockroach) crawling along the tub ledge in the background behind her arm. I can't see how it could have been missed by anyone watching the video feed on the set, much less later in the dailies. But assuming it wasn't an accident, the bug's presence makes no sense even with the later revelations. Weird...