SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

grahamcarter-1 Scopophilia is Greek for 'love of looking;' Brian DePalma, like Dario Argento and Hitchcock is always looking. And so are his characters. In the opening of 'Femme Fatale' (2002), Laure is watching Billy Wilder's 'Double Indemnity' (1944). She and her 'gang' are about to steal a fortune in diamonds at the Cannes Film Festival, from the girlfriend of film director Regis Wargnier (playing himself, his film played Cannes that year). The plan is for Laure to successfully seduce her in the bathroom stall while Wargnier's 'East-West' plays on the big screen. Now, it strikes me that as 'meticulous' as the plan sounds, it is really fraught with potential failure! Will Laure's seduction happen on cue? Will security take a leak on cue? (The last five minutes of the film make you realise the seduction was a dead certainty… ). What saves it is the bravura filmmaking. The heist shows a technical wizardry that reminded me of the best bits of DePalma's 'Mission: Impossible' (1996).He has made remarkable use of the split-screen technique before, but never has it been so self-reflexively and personally deployed as it is here. To slowly introduce the technique, during the heist he uses 'natural' screen dividers, such as toilet stall walls, to divide the screen. This results in later, when he actually does split the screen that the divide doesn't seem so gimmicky or jarring. Twenty minutes in and the blonde Laure has performed a double cross. We then cut to a rainy day as Nicolas watches from up high on his balcony; he is a photographer (Laure was impersonating a photographer at the heist), and he snaps Laure who has donned a dark wig, and will in more than one way become Lily. About half an hour into the film DePalma begins to caress, or is it 'lull' us with running water, ticking clocks, Pino Donnagio music (but by Ryuichi Sakamoto), and then a sudden crack of thunder sends us the message that 'something else' is going on here as Laure is in the bath at Lily's parents' house and in walks 'Lily,' upset and crying on the day of her funeral, the overflowing fish tank is a big clue… As Roger Ebert correctly assesses; "This is a movie about watching and being watched, about seeing and not knowing what you see."Seven years after the heist, (so therefore, based on when the film was released, we are now in the future!), Laure unwillingly returns to Paris; she is 'Lily' and married to the American ambassador. The "Déjà Vu 2008" poster that decorates a telephone booth outside Nicolas' apartment may seem like a simple wink to the audience, but the use of the painting "Ophelia" (1852), by John Everett Millais, in the poster points to Laure's trouble with water. In Argento's own 'Trauma' (1993), and Argento fan Chang Youn-hyun's film 'Tell Me Something' (1999), the Millais painting is used as similar visual shorthand. And mentioning Argento, DePalma again uses the surprise reveal from Argento's 'Tenebre.'A classic 'femme fatale,' Laure packs a gun and uses her awareness of men to devour them and spit them out. She turns very nasty in the scene on the bridge, and Nicolas becomes acutely aware of her intentions. The film becomes very dark indeed, with them going to a bar not dissimilar to 'One Eyed Jacks' in David Lynch's 'Fire Walk With Me' (1992), where all the patrons are men wearing black; apparently not a gay bar, but more a nest of thieves. In the climax on the bridge, Laure is thrown in the river, having finally been tracked down by her double crossed cohorts; but look, once she is in the water she is nude, born again, she has a second chance.Arguably the most personal film DePalma has made since 'Body Double', 'Femme Fatale' is nowhere near as dark a film (the Argento within is harder to find, but it is there with an outsider investigating, seeing and not seeing). It comes complete with a typically frustrating DePalma denouement… I suppose he is allowed to use dream sequences, Aeschylus' invented them in 'The Persians' in 472 BC.

seymourblack-1 As an example of how to convey information with a minimum of dialogue, this movie is absolutely outstanding. Its plot unfolds so naturally and gracefully across the screen that, as well as telling its tale with great efficiency, it also creates a wonderfully hypnotic atmosphere. Its story about a well-planned diamond heist involves double-crosses, blackmail and revenge as well as some reflections on the level to which individuals are able to control their own destinies and interestingly, it also includes a number of Hitchcockian influences such as voyeurism, doubles, confused identities and the disguise motif.Stylistically, the emphasis is on presenting the action with the kind of deliberate pace and fluid camera-work that together contribute so strongly to the dreamlike mood of the piece. This, in turn, makes some of the plot's stranger coincidences, apparently illogical developments and moments of deja vu seem far less incongruous than would have been the case, if they'd have been seen in a more conventionally-filmed movie.During the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, Laure Ash (Rebecca Romjin-Stamos) has a key role to play in a heist that's been planned by her gang-leader, Black Tie (Eriq Ebouaney) and posing as a press photographer at one of the premieres, sees a model called Veronica (Rie Rasmussen) who attracts a lot of attention because of the very revealing gold, serpent-shaped, diamond-encrusted piece of body jewellery that she's wearing. When Laure and Veronica meet in the ladies' room immediately before the movie's due to be screened, Laure is seen apparently seducing the model and during their encounter, removes the various pieces of Veronica's body-jewellery and drops them to the floor. Black Tie, who's hidden in the adjacent cubicle, then systematically swaps each piece for a fake replica in readiness for making off with the loot which is valued at $10,000,000. Things don't go so smoothly from this point on and culminate in Laure double-crossing her partners-in-crime and escaping to Paris with the stolen jewellery.In Paris, Laure is mistaken for a missing woman called Lily, who looks identical to her and so, after stealing her double's passport and plane ticket to New York, Laure takes the opportunity to escape to a new life in America. During the flight, she meets a wealthy businessman who she subsequently marries. Seven years later, when her husband, Bruce Hewitt Watts (Peter Coyote) is appointed as the American ambassador to France, Laure reluctantly has to return to Paris (coincidentally at the same time as Black Tie is released from prison). After a period during which she's able to keep a low profile, her cover is suddenly blown after freelance photographer, Nicholas Bardo (Antonio Banderas) takes a photograph of her which then appears in numerous publications and puts her life in danger because her fellow gang-members are out for revenge.The surreal series of events that follow illustrate further just how evil and manipulative Laure is and produce a dizzying succession of twists and turns that lead to the movie's entertaining and highly unpredictable conclusion. Intriguingly, during this part of the movie, it also becomes apparent that a number of things that had happened earlier, were not actually what they'd appeared to be.Brian De Palma's "Femme Fatale" is an immensely absorbing mystery thriller that features a woman whose characteristics are typical of the noir archetype and readily admits that she's "a bad girl, real bad - rotten to the heart". Rebecca Romjin-Stamos hits all the right notes as both Laure and Lily and Antonio Banderas is charming and humorous as her victim. The real star of the show, however, is the camera. The ways in which split-screen techniques, tracking shots and overhead camera angles cover the action are totally breathtaking and clearly the work of a filmmaker who fully understands and is inspired by, all the possibilities of cinema as a visual medium.

Blake Peterson The older acclaimed filmmakers get, the harder it is to retain the excitement found in their earliest films. If you're Michael Bay, no problem — you were never respected to begin with. But if you're an auteur that blew the minds of audiences and critics alike for a generation, there's a good chance you'll slip up in your later years and get lost in the sands of time. It happened to Hitchcock, to Donen, to Wilder; and, if you want to talk about present day tragedies, I could passively mention Dario Argento and Brian De Palma. But we don't have to go there.One doesn't want to slip up — but the more directors stick to their guns, the more their style seems to inevitably age. Wes Craven was meta and fresh come "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream" time, but these days, he's considered to be the guy that revamped the horror genre in the past, presently a living legend who just can't seem to relive his glory days. Francis Ford Coppola made the 1970s, but currently spends his time releasing little seen indies that only suggest a fall from grace.But let's go back to Brian De Palma. The Alfred Hitchcock of the 1970s and '80s, billed as the Master of the Macabre, he refreshed tired thriller predictabilities using metallically lux photography and implausible plot twists to complement the tone, not the little-there realism of it all. "Sisters", "Dressed to Kill", "Blow Out", and "Body Double" are untouchable masterpieces in sheer filmmaking, even if some of his choices are questionable — his most famous movies, "Carrie", "Scarface", and "Mission: Impossible", are famous for a reason, but hardly capture the same cockily audacious sleaziness of its sexy counterparts.But as time as gone on, De Palma's fondness of split-screens, laughable plot twists, and sunglassed blonde vixens with a like for cigarettes and sunglasses have gotten remarkably stale, most evidenced by 2012's awful "Passion". "Femme Fatale" sees him transitioning into that "old man" faze — though a lot of it doesn't work, a lot of it does, in ways as stimulating as earlier, fantastically realized moments in his filmography. There's a lot I could complain about (consider that De Palma decides to pull the rug completely out from under his plot right at the conclusion, leaving us dissatisfied and upset), but there is also a whole lot I could praise. While "Femme Fatale" is imperfect, it is often times electrifying, containing some of De Palma's most artistically brazen sequences. The titular femme fatale is Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn), a slinky thief who, in the introduction of the film, participates in a risky jewel heist at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. But things get complicated, and, unfortunately for her fellow criminals, Laure outsmarts her accomplices and ends up with the goods. After the adventure, she realizes that living the life of a piece of scum isn't for her, and so, after thinking the film is going one way, we are jerked as it cuts seven years into the future. How she gets out of trouble I cannot reveal — let's just say that some people show up in the right place at the right time. When we find her in De Palma's 2008, she is the wife of a millionaire, her past coming back to haunt her at the wrong moment. But this isn't a case of a tainted woman wanting to forget about what made her tainted in the first place; it is the continuance of a manipulator's quest for power after a long hiatus of keeping devilish instincts hidden."Femme Fatale" gets more and more annoyingly incomprehensible as it goes along, but never does De Palma's style stop delighting us. Perhaps at the peak of his silky intuitions, he can pull off convoluted instances of slow motion cat-and-mouse games and voyeuristic split-screen snapshots because it feels so right. Tricky and exotic, "Femme Fatale" is the kind of film that flourishes the most when it's choosing style over substance — a shame that De Palma thinks that a final plot puzzle that ruins everything will actually enchant us.But there's too much good here to write off. The entire opening might be the best of his career. (The camera zooms in on a grainy version of "Double Indemnity" on a French television set, the subtitles giving it an allure hardly seen before. As the lens pulls back and reveals a shapely woman laying on a white sheeted bed, wearing nothing but lacy blank underwear, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, her hair slicked back, passively watching, we are hypnotized; the rest of the scene, mostly without dialogue and mostly recorded in single takes, transitions into the robbery itself, which, in turn, is sensationally executed.) But after these initial scenes end, "Femme Fatale" strolls along without the tension it once had and the sexiness it once put into our laps. But it has its moments, with an endlessly provocative Romijn to tie it all together. De Palma is one of the great modern filmmakers, and although the film can sometimes be slight, you can hardly deny how effortlessly his boldness translates onto the screen.

Samiam3 The financial and critical disaster of Brian de Palma's space opera Mission to Mars was probably a good indicator that De Palma is a long way from home in the science fiction genre. (I actually didn't hate the movie, but many people did) For his follow up, de Palma returns to a more familiar genre, the suspenseful thriller in Hitchcock-fashion. For what it is, Femme Fatale is recommendable, but it's not quite a good movie. It is burdened by an inept leading actress and a mediocre screenplay which is over ambitious and low on credibility. Femme Fatale is pretty much a b-movie, but at least it is a watchable one.While the substance may be flimsy, the style is strong. Femme Fatale expresses a love for the art of photography, which can be seen in the frame and in the plot alike. Most of the camera work is quite distinctive. There are a lot of long takes, extreme high and low angles, some with a canted frame. the picture is rich, and heavily saturated, making use of different light sources for different effects. Just occasionally I think Femme Fatale pushes a bit far. De Palma also uses his split screen effect, which is sort of cumbersome, because we the audience are forced to watch both sides of the screen while paying attention to the dialogue. In an attempt to be the best it can be, Femme Fatale has an ending that sort of changes the perspective on the whole picture, and it liable to make an intelligent viewer feel cheated. Femme Fatale is an exercise in the arts and ideas of it's genre but it pushes too far with some details and ignores more important ones. Intelligence and originality are lacking, ergo, This is not a movie for a critical viewer, but it's watchable.