Watch Femme Fatale For Free

One of my all time favorites.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The older acclaimed filmmakers get, the harder it is to retain the excitement found in their earliest films. If you're Michael Bay, no problem — you were never respected to begin with. But if you're an auteur that blew the minds of audiences and critics alike for a generation, there's a good chance you'll slip up in your later years and get lost in the sands of time. It happened to Hitchcock, to Donen, to Wilder; and, if you want to talk about present day tragedies, I could passively mention Dario Argento and Brian De Palma. But we don't have to go there.One doesn't want to slip up — but the more directors stick to their guns, the more their style seems to inevitably age. Wes Craven was meta and fresh come "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream" time, but these days, he's considered to be the guy that revamped the horror genre in the past, presently a living legend who just can't seem to relive his glory days. Francis Ford Coppola made the 1970s, but currently spends his time releasing little seen indies that only suggest a fall from grace.But let's go back to Brian De Palma. The Alfred Hitchcock of the 1970s and '80s, billed as the Master of the Macabre, he refreshed tired thriller predictabilities using metallically lux photography and implausible plot twists to complement the tone, not the little-there realism of it all. "Sisters", "Dressed to Kill", "Blow Out", and "Body Double" are untouchable masterpieces in sheer filmmaking, even if some of his choices are questionable — his most famous movies, "Carrie", "Scarface", and "Mission: Impossible", are famous for a reason, but hardly capture the same cockily audacious sleaziness of its sexy counterparts.But as time as gone on, De Palma's fondness of split-screens, laughable plot twists, and sunglassed blonde vixens with a like for cigarettes and sunglasses have gotten remarkably stale, most evidenced by 2012's awful "Passion". "Femme Fatale" sees him transitioning into that "old man" faze — though a lot of it doesn't work, a lot of it does, in ways as stimulating as earlier, fantastically realized moments in his filmography. There's a lot I could complain about (consider that De Palma decides to pull the rug completely out from under his plot right at the conclusion, leaving us dissatisfied and upset), but there is also a whole lot I could praise. While "Femme Fatale" is imperfect, it is often times electrifying, containing some of De Palma's most artistically brazen sequences. The titular femme fatale is Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn), a slinky thief who, in the introduction of the film, participates in a risky jewel heist at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. But things get complicated, and, unfortunately for her fellow criminals, Laure outsmarts her accomplices and ends up with the goods. After the adventure, she realizes that living the life of a piece of scum isn't for her, and so, after thinking the film is going one way, we are jerked as it cuts seven years into the future. How she gets out of trouble I cannot reveal — let's just say that some people show up in the right place at the right time. When we find her in De Palma's 2008, she is the wife of a millionaire, her past coming back to haunt her at the wrong moment. But this isn't a case of a tainted woman wanting to forget about what made her tainted in the first place; it is the continuance of a manipulator's quest for power after a long hiatus of keeping devilish instincts hidden."Femme Fatale" gets more and more annoyingly incomprehensible as it goes along, but never does De Palma's style stop delighting us. Perhaps at the peak of his silky intuitions, he can pull off convoluted instances of slow motion cat-and-mouse games and voyeuristic split-screen snapshots because it feels so right. Tricky and exotic, "Femme Fatale" is the kind of film that flourishes the most when it's choosing style over substance — a shame that De Palma thinks that a final plot puzzle that ruins everything will actually enchant us.But there's too much good here to write off. The entire opening might be the best of his career. (The camera zooms in on a grainy version of "Double Indemnity" on a French television set, the subtitles giving it an allure hardly seen before. As the lens pulls back and reveals a shapely woman laying on a white sheeted bed, wearing nothing but lacy blank underwear, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, her hair slicked back, passively watching, we are hypnotized; the rest of the scene, mostly without dialogue and mostly recorded in single takes, transitions into the robbery itself, which, in turn, is sensationally executed.) But after these initial scenes end, "Femme Fatale" strolls along without the tension it once had and the sexiness it once put into our laps. But it has its moments, with an endlessly provocative Romijn to tie it all together. De Palma is one of the great modern filmmakers, and although the film can sometimes be slight, you can hardly deny how effortlessly his boldness translates onto the screen.

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.

Much like its director, Brian Depalma, Femme Fatale, a creatively slick crime drama that deconstructs the Hollywood archetype of the same name, has been completely ignored in this country since its release in 2002. Regardless, it is still a cinematically inventive masterpiece that utilizes every possible convention of the genre and then turns it upside down, in a way that only Brian Depalma can. Ever since his horror masterpiece, Sisters, released in 1973, Depalma has been exploring Hollywood genres, picking them apart, finding out what is so fascinating about them, then exploiting those fascinating elements beyond necessity, in both a celebratory way, as well as a satirical one. His films become essays on whatever genre he is navigating us through and perhaps this is why he is often misunderstood in America. The overindulgence of sex and violence in his movies is more of a reflection of the excessive sex and violence in movies in general. People react positively to these type of images so Depalma gives it to them in spades, taking the genre to the umpteenth degree. Ultimately though, one has to realize there is much humor in his presentation and quite often these scenes are satirical jabs more than anything else. Depalma both loves and laughs at Hollywood movies.Femme Fatale begins with a jewel heist that takes place in the midst of the Cannes Festival. And in true Depalma fashion, it includes long tracking shots (taking us up and down staircases, down long hallways and through ventilation shafts), a Bolero-esque classical piece that helps to build the suspense slowly (forcing viewers to shatter their expectations for fast cuts and fast action), and a sex scene hotter than any Depalma has shot previously (which says a lot, considering he also directed Body Double and Dressed to Kill). After the heist is foiled and the heroine, Laurie (Rebecca Romijn), narrowly escapes her former partners in crime, who are now out to kill her, Laurie finds herself mistaken for another woman. Laurie takes advantage of this turn of events and steals the woman's passport, as well as her ticket to America. Fast forward seven years later and Laurie is now married to the American ambassador to France and is forced to return to a country where assassins are still after her. She remains incognito, so it takes some effort for the photographer, Nicolas (Antonio Banderas), to capture a picture of her for the tabloids. Ultimately he does and her picture is plastered on billboards all over France, putting Laurie's life in grave danger.Similar themes that exist in earlier Depalma films find their way into Femme Fatale, particularly the theme of "the double," in which there is either a case of mistaken identity, twin siblings with opposite personalities, or a character suffering from multiple personality order, as was the case in Body Double, Sisters, and Dressed to Kill, respectively. The theme of surveillance and its intrusion into our personal lives has also found its way into Femme Fatale, much like in Blow Out, Depalma's Americanized version of Antonioni's Blow Up, in which a soundman records a car accident that proves to be no accident. These themes mentioned play a crucial role in Femme Fatale, but ultimately, it is the theme of the Hollywood archetype, the "femme fatale," and the expectations put on that character that dominates this film. And ultimately those expectations are shattered and a new understanding of the archetype comes into existence. This understanding could only be possible with a master writer/director manning the helm and Brian Depalma is just that, a master. Wake up, America!

If you enjoy watching Brian De Palma move the camera around, this is the film for you because De Palma does everything here but shove the camera up his butt and give himself a colonoscopy. For the rest of us, actually watching a colonoscopy would be more entertaining and rewarding than sitting through Femme Fatale.Before I get to the plot, I first have to say that Rebecca Romijn probably sets a new standard here in the category of "Models who embarrass themselves by trying to act". Now, I know what you're thinking. "How could she possible be worse than Cindy Crawford in Fair Game?" It does seem both physically and metaphysically impossible for any model to be a more pathetic thespian than Crawford trying to pass herself off as an attorney. Well somehow, possibly with the aid of the Devil or some lesser demonic entity, Romijn manages to suck even more. There's not an ounce of conviction in anything she says, her range of expression goes all the way from heavily medicated to lightly sedated and she moves like a poorly operated animatronic figure. Romijn is trying to portray a con-woman in this movie, but she's not even believable as a human being.In fairness, Romijn might not have been THIS awesomely terrible without her director apparently doing everything he could to magnify and exaggerate her weaknesses. In the first 40 minutes of Femme Fatale, Romijn is on screen almost the entire time but has less than 40 seconds of dialog. That means she's asked to carry off her role solely on the strength of her ability to emote. Unfortunately, Romijn radiates emotion like a frozen corpse in a Siberian blizzard. It is honestly uncomfortable to see her fail so miserably at conveying the simplest and most elemental of feelings. Then when Romijn does get to talk, De Palma saddles her with a French accent, which is a little like asking the world's worst cook to make a soufflé.As for the plot, Romijn plays a beautiful enigma who betrays her partners in a jewel theft and manages to run into a woman who looks exactly like her, so she steals the other woman's identity to hide from her vengeful former comrades. As her doppelganger, Romijn's character meets a U.S. diplomat (Peter Coyote) and marries him. 7 years later, a handsome non-entity (Antonio Banderas) manages to take a photo of Romijn's character, which launches her into a ludicrously convoluted scheme to extort money from her husband and disappear before her betrayed buddies can track her down and kill her. I really can't go any further into the plot without spraining my brain. This isn't one of those stories where things don't make sense. This is one of those stories where it is impossible for things to make sense. There are holes in this plot that even De Palma himself couldn't explain away if I stuck his genitals in a garbage disposal and threatened to flip the switch.Oh, and that whole "running into someone who looks exactly like you at the precise moment you need to hide your true identity" thing? Sounds pretty convenient, doesn't it? Well, there's a twist at the end of this film that's a billion times more absurd than that. I'd tell you what it is, except then I'd feel compelled to go on for at least another 5,000 words about how bizarrely, insultingly ridiculous it is and life is too short for that.Femme Fatale is a f***ing fiasco.