Let's give Brian De Palma the benefit of the doubt and say he meant Femme Fatale to be an outrageous sex comedy that tips its hat to film noir.
His heroine Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) is a thief whose statuesque body is a weapon of deceit and danger. It seems no one is immune to her seductive wiles. In the opening sequence, Laure and her cohorts set out to steal a bikini made of gold and jewels from a model attending a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
The model (Rie Rasmussen) slips into a washroom for an encounter with Laure. During their love making, Laure slips the bikini parts to her male accomplice on the other side of the glass partition. He then passes Laure a phony version of the costume.
Something goes wrong.
Some people die while others are just wounded and the jewels and Laure disappear.
De Palma has always loved to pay tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and in this case he takes a theme from Hitchcock's 1964 erotic thriller Marnie.
Through a series of bizarre coincidences, Laure is able to create an entirely new persona when she assumes the identity of Lily, a woman who commits suicide.
Laure as Lily escapes from France to America, marries a millionaire businessman known as Watts (Peter Coyote).
Fate intervenes once again when Watts is named an ambassador to France and they must return.
This is when Nicolas (Antonio Banderas), a paparrazi photographer takes her picture which is splattered on billboards across the nation alerting Laure's former colleagues in crime that she is back. It all amounts to great fun if it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
Heaven forbid De Palma ever conceived Femme Fatale as a serious sexual thriller because it is just too outrageous.
Romijn-Stamos is stunning and certainly heats up the screen in the four or five steamy sex scenes. She's not nearly as convincing in the heavier dramatic moments.
Banderas is all brooding masculinity and if his performance seems a bit confused blame it on the dual nature of some of the characters.
Femme Fatale is a slick, wild sex romp that's best enjoyed the less sense one tries to make of it while it's unfolding.
(This film is rated AA)
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