MOVIE - FEMME FATALE - Review Rating $$$ (OUT OF 10)
STARRING - ANTONIO BANDERAS, REBECCA ROMIJN-STAMOS, PETER COYOTE, GREGG HENRY, REI RASMUSSEN & ERIC EBOUANEY.
A very bad girl escapes her past only to have it catch up to her when she is photographed by a down and out photographer played by Banderas.
Brian De Palma, the screenwriter and director of Femme Fatale, has a very checkered past. He's brought us the edgy Body Double and Carrie as well as the forgettable Bon Fire of the Vanities and Mission Impossible (the sequel, Mission Impossible 2, was a much better film). Femme Fatale, a movie with a lot of potential, falls into the latter category.
Femme Fatale is supposed to be a tribute to the film noir movies of the 40's and 50's. As such, it is an exercise in style over substance that proves the point, that man can't survive on bread alone. This is one tribute we could could have done without.
There is virtually no dialogue in the first 30 minutes or so of the film. De Palma is content to rely almost exclusively on his camera to portray the heist that serves as the backdrop for the rest of the story. I'll admit its stylish. What it isn't is intense. De Palma falls in love with his method and fails to recognize when too much of a good thing is enough. In fact, the camera, by the end of this sequence, has produced such a superficial tonality to the story that it begins to make a mockery of it. I couldn't help but thinking that the lack of dialogue was a result of the director's lack of confidence in his star's ability to act.
The rest of the story is hampered by both a weak script and bad acting. I'm sorry, but while Romijn-Stamos is beautiful, she and the movie suffer from the focus on style over substance. She simply does not have the talent to pull this role off. Her lack of credibility is such, that what should have otherwise been a steamy 3 minute lap dance late in the film, almost completely fails to raise an eyebrow let alone any other bodily response.
The rest of the performances are also handicapped by a combination of a weak script and talent. There are only two exceptions, the interrogation scene and a scene when Banderas pretends to be gay. Neither scene is sufficient justification to pay the admission price. As for the many opportunities, to see scantily clad women, wait a week or two and they'll no doubt be available on the internet for free.
Oh yeah, without giving it away, there are clues in the movie that something else is going on. By the time we get to the payoff, its impact is greatly lessened by the fact that the audience no longer really cares (I, personally, was tempted to walk out about halfway through). The payoff, a superficial morsel of moralizing, also comes out of left-field. A film-noir, with a happy hollywood ending, isn't that an oxymoron?
Femme Fatale is fatally flawed.
Alternative Reviews:
http://www.privatejoker.org/
http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/cst-ftr-femme06.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/review.asp?mid=2045141
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/FemmeFatale-1118216/
Official Website:
http://femmefatalemovie.warnerbros.com/
MY TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2002 LIST
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2003
David Schwartz.
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8/9/03; 11:06:32 PM.
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