Review: Femme Fatale

Femme Fatale is a porno film, cleverly disguised as a thriller. The problem is that anything in the movie that doesn’t involve sex is monstrously boring. If director Brian De Palma were to remove the opening lesbian sex scene and ending full-frontal nude shots of Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, it would be devoid of anything even remotely interesting. Femme Fatale has already been stripped of any intelligent ideas that might’ve appeared in the screenplay prior to production. Guys—if you want to watch the only pleasing segments of the film—cop them of the internet, just as you would with pornography. Gals—I’m not sure why bisexual any female would even want to put themselves in a situation that would require them to watch this flick.

Right now, you probably think that I’m the shallowest person on the planet. But, the criticism that I’ve just presented is the utter truth. Femme Fatale is the stupidest, weirdest, and trickiest picture that I’ve come across in years. It creates a plot that twists and turns, without any real reason to. This is just to confuse the audience. De Palma wants us to think that his work is clever and witty, by making it flinchingly odd and bizarre, without ever needing to. If the writing had been more intriguing and imaginative, the entire picture would’ve been a lot more interesting. But, it’s not, and the material that it’s working with doesn’t even have the potential to be. Femme Fatale is an ugly disaster.

Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is very sexy in the film and will without a doubt make many sexual drives go insane during the several scenes featuring sex and full-frontal nudity. Her performance is surprisingly solid, as well. Romijn-Stamos is definitely the strong suit of the film. But even the best of performers can’t always light up dismal films. There are far too many flaws in Femme Fatale for Romijn-Stamos to be able to save the entire show. She helps it immensely, and saves it from being one of the biggest cinematic disasters of all time, but can’t bring it back to life. Just because she’s undeniably sexy and an excellent actress doesn’t mean she can work wonders. Femme Fatale was, from the beginning, a project dead on arrival. Lame is a word that accurately describes its attempts.

The man to blame for this is writer/director De Palma. His work on Femme Fatale is some of the worst of the year. If you look at each of his shots, they look visually mystical and enchanting. But if you examine the content inside of these frames, you will find that the direction doesn’t match the tone of the writing at all. The two different aspects of his work are very conflictive, and are not coordinative in the least bit. I really hate to have to not recommend the work of one of my favorite filmmakers, but De Palma’s touch on Femme Fatale is undoubtedly embarrassing. After a career of monumental moviemaking, De Palma should call it quits while he’s ahead.

With a dynamite opening and a pleasing ending (you know what I’m talking about), Femme Fatale knows how to start and finish. It sure doesn’t know how to mesh the two pieces together, though. The middle is dry, and shows us how bad the film really is. I pity De Palma. This is a broken picture with undeveloped characters and a laughable twist. Romijn-Stamos is wonderful, but here co-stars are absolutely disastrous (including Antonio Banderas, who shows us one of the worst performances of the year). I expected more, mass quantities more—at that. If there’s one thing that Femme Fatale will do, that’s open up a career in pornography for Romijn-Stamos, not that she would want one. I imagine that the work she’s done in this film is definitely enough.

-Danny, Bucket Reviews