Femme Fatale Review
Heralded by many as a return to form for director Brian_De_Palma, Femme Fatale almost feels like a career summation for the master stylist. Although it barely registered at the box office, this tawdry piece of noir revisionism is actually nifty entertainment -- tricky, engrossing, and just short of profound. The gorgeous Rebecca Romijn-Stamos does double duty in the title role, playing both a jewel thief and her unlikely doppelganger. As that description indicates, the plot is not a little outlandish -- which is fine by De_Palma. The maverick director uses the narrative as little more than a springboard to elaborate on his formal and thematic obsessions. The movie is a delirious hodgepodge of De_Palma tropes: split screens, doubles, voyeurs, and graceful tracking shots abound. At once employing and exploding the clichés of film noir, De_Palma skirts dangerously close to self-parody. Based on a script the director penned himself, it's sometimes hard to tell whether the movie -- packed with hokey twists and risible argot -- apes bad thrillers or unintentionally plays like one. Like De_Palma's most personal movies, Femme Fatale is unabashedly overheated and overwrought. Like his most successful movies, however, the hysteria is thrilling -- it gives the film its oneiric power. Femme Fatale will draw comparisons with David_Lynch's Mulholland_Drive, another dreamlike movie with which it shares certain themes. Less subtle than Lynch's movie, Femme Fatale is like its trashier, no-good cousin: certainly less transcendent, but perhaps more fun. Elbert Ventura, Rovi
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