Femme Fatale

A soap-opera quality twist in the last 20 minutes of this Brian De Palma erotic noir thriller almost puts the kibosh on what is otherwise a sumptuous work of B-movie imagination. From its complex, spectacularly executed and near-silent opening-act heist (beautiful, sexy, icy-tough thief Rebecca Romijn-Stamos lifts a diamond-encrusted, barely-there bustier off a model at the Cannes Film Festival) to the anti-heroine's later seduction and setup of an unsuspecting Paris paparazzi (Antonio Banderas) for her own kidnapping, this picture is an engrossingly elaborate and stylish brain/libido teaser. Slick, enigmatic, imaginative, and every bit as voluptuous as its leading lady, Femme Fatale employs some of De Palma's favorite visual techniques (split screen, tracking shots, perspective shots, extreme slow-motion) with terrific, tension-mounting results, and Ryuichi Sakamoto's Bolero-like score lends a wonderfully moody opulence. But just as De Palma crashed and burned after 45 minutes of near-genius in 1998's Snake Eyes, the writer-director's Big Twist in this film rips so many holes in the plot that it's hard to not femme slap him for the sheer hokum of the finale. Recommended, overall. [Note: DVD extras include the featurettes “Visualizing Femme Fatale: From Dream to Reality” (11 min.) and “Femme Fatale--An Appreciation: Dream Within a Dream” (23 min.), a five-minute behind-the-scenes segment, a two-minute “Femme Fatale: Dressed to Kill” montage, cast and crew film highlights, and trailers. Bottom line: A standard extras package for a mind-bending, if ultimately disappointing, thriller.] (R. Blackwelder)