Femme Fatale (2002)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

What makes it different from others?

Overrated

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

FEMME FATALE is another example of how Brian De Palma's star has waned over the years. Give me the director circa 1980 and the likes of DRESSED TO KILL and BLOW OUT and he could do no wrong; but as with many of the young directors of the 1970s, he seems to be unable to make a good film these days. FEMME FATALE, written and directed by De Palma, is a case in point. It's a confusing, convoluted thriller, badly over-directed by the once great; the opening robbery sequence should be amazing, featuring orchestral music, shocking scenes of violence and sexuality, and hard-working cinematography. Instead it feels overblown and silly, and it's hard not to burst into laughter at the earnestness of it all.Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, best known as the blue-skinned mutant in X-MEN, is a poor choice for the lead role; she just doesn't have the acting chops for the job. Antonio Banderas is better, but underutilised and acting with tongue in cheek for the most part (and who can blame him?). The film seems to go on forever and deals one unconvincing plot twist after another, and in the end it just went over me rather than involving me.

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.

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.

DePalma makes another attempt to channel Hitchcock and comes out the loser.This film starts off with a heist sequence which, despite its huge implausibilities, turns out to be the best part of the movie despite being lumbered with a score which is trying (and failing) to be Ravel's Bolero. It then descends into a "plot" which intertwines the threat of payback for betrayal with various goings on involving a paparazzo, before pulling a whopper of a plot twist out of nowhere (so huge that it it is tantamount to conning the audience) before wrapping up with a showpiece sequence which would have been effective had it not been predicated on the tosh which precedes it.Within this mess DePalma lobs assorted Hitchcockian motifs and themes - the blonde woman, identity games, man in the wrong place at the wrong time, minor events having major effects, man framed for crime he didn't commit etc. - and dresses them up with assorted Hitchcockian directorial flourishes.Sadly, none of this suffices to compensate for a plot which is so massively flawed (and for which the director - who also wrote the movie - must, one fears, take responsibility).Rebecca Romijn battles valiantly with a role in which her character's motivations change seemingly by the minute (her character changes from a rogue to a decent person by the end, a fundamental change for which the rationale appears to be the aforementioned plot twist) and where she is required to deliver dialogue in three different languages, which she does fluently. Peter Coyote turns up, collects his cheque, and departs. Antonion Banderas looks as confused as his character, and well he might.This is a poor effort, trying hard to be a classic in the Master's style, and failing miserably.