Femme Fatale

Femme Fatale is Brian De Palma’s masterful cinematic plaything that will receive well-deserved acclaim from a limited group of viewers. Outwardly inaccessible and strange, inwardly childishly simple and beautiful. A treat for connoisseurs. (02.04.2003)

I really don’t know what to think about this. De Palma is still a playful director, but this time he attempted a screenplay, and I wonder if he wasn’t permanently high when he wrote it. The plot is very convoluted, but the whole film is nothing compared to the final ten minutes, when everything twists and turns while connecting in a bizarre plot twist. I feel that De Palma just took the piss out of the viewers. We can only shake our heads at the result and admit that such a farce is definitely worth watching. And in case you don’t agree with me, there’s also Rebecca and her legs longer than the week before payday and the director doesn’t spare her boobs. (22.06.2003)

Forget about the villains from Scarface, Carlito's Way, or The Untouchables, who were gangsters, thieves, and smugglers with grace, malice, or just sheer cunning. Here, De Palma presents all the bad guys as swearing puppets who have been waiting in prison for years to finally meet their humiliating (non)finale. And if you used to root for Carlito or Eliot Ness, well, that's the end of that too. The main heroes have shrunk into a sly, pseudo-sophisticated beauty and a photographer who runs around from nowhere to nowhere and lets himself be manipulated without much trouble. So goodbye, classic film noir or crime story, and welcome a deeply boring game for the viewer, which shows that all the clues you tried to follow actually led to no interesting point; it's just the script desperately giving in at its very end. (26.11.2008)

A very strange, inconsistent and convoluted film benefiting mainly from the director's skill and its two stars. After the first (quite good) fifteen minutes, you think it will be a standard mediocre thriller, but in the end, it's all different. It only depends on whether you are willing to accept such a development of the story or not. If yes, it will definitely be a very enjoyable movie experience. If not, you will end up somewhat unsatisfied. (18.07.2004)

An unexpectedly great film. After a flawless 20-minute opening, which consists of some of the best filmed heist action I've ever seen (backed by a sensational Ravel-inspired Bolerish score), comes a completely unpredictable story that, for me at least, lacks nothing. It spills freely like water from an overflowing bathtub (or aquarium), keeps the viewer's attention permanently, surprises and unnerves him at the end and calms him down again. And to top it all off, we get to see everything we love about Mr. De Palma. Except for the shootout on the stairs. I liked it very much. (23.10.2012)

I came, I lied down, I put on Femme Fatale, I didn’t understand it, and yet I enjoyed every minute, drooling at Rebecca Romijn, and went to bed. De Palma is quite a conman and I’m not sure whether all those homages to cinema and narrative twists and turns made sense this time, but those games are fun, if nothing else. 75% (09.04.2020)

Really poor. The director certainly had some interesting ideas (the split screen with different angles or zoom would work great in porn) and it looks like he was having a good time, but the final result isn’t very watchable. One thing is for sure, though. Rebecca Romijn (then Stamos) was hot in just like the first time I saw the film. (29.04.2020)

That beginning "ALONE"! The way De Palma plays with individual shots, the sneaky, sly, at times perhaps even voyeuristic cinematography that is absolutely perfect and most of all – the elegance. I rarely use the term "elegant", in this case so nonchalant, with a film, but in this case it can be used to describe very accurately how the entire film feels from the start. The opening scene in Cannes is extremely impressive, it actually flows quite slowly and there isn't much dialogue, but everything is so subtly and expertly handled by Brian De Palma that it just draws you in and doesn't let go. Elegance, originality, unconventionality, and overall a film that is formally impossibly rich. If you feel that the script is muddled and that many scenes are there for effect, so to speak, you should probably be paying more attention to the actual structure of the plot, which may not match the aforementioned formal qualities yet branches interestingly and hides at least two "De Palma-isms" that might not be entirely easy to detect at first. I noticed them only the third time around, and of course I’m still not sure.:) An extraordinary experience that you won’t see anywhere else. (09.10.2011)