IMDB 6.3
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Jack's Rating :
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This French movie has a really good name for a film noir. It starts out with Laure Ash watching Double Indemnity on her bed. A man comes in and goes over the instructions for a bait and switch that she is going to do. Then there is then a scene at the Cannes Film festival with a model wearing a beautiful diamond necklace. When she goes to the bathroom (Femmes) Laure meets her and starts kissing her (which was weird). Laura then seduces her and with the help of her accomplices begins stealing her jewelry, switching one piece at a time.The scene goes on for about 20 minutes.
Laure betrays her partners and takes off with the diamonds. Back in Parix she is spotted for someone named Lilly, who she must look like with her brown wig. Meanwhile Laura's partners search for her. One finds her and throws her off of a balcony. She is taken care of by people who think she is their daughter.
The real Lilly comes back to the apartment and commits suicide. Laure then takes over her identity and heads to America. On the plane she meets the an Ameican named Watts (Peter Coyote).
The movie then jumps to seven years later. Watts is now the new American ambassador to France and he brings his French wife with him to Paris. A photographer named Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas) takes a picture of the new ambassador's wife.
One of Laure's accomplices, Black Tie, from the jewel heist gets out of jail, and sees her picture.
Bardo continues to try to get pictures of the mysterious wife of the ambassador. He finally meets her and then he begins to drag her down. She uses Bardo to pretend she has been kidnapped and tries to get 10 million out of her husband. When Bardo tells her husband she shoots and kills her husband, and she seems to enjoy it. Then she shoots Bardo.
In the end it was all a dream in the bathtub, when she was in Lilly's apartment. This time she rushes out and saves Lilly from shooting herself.
In the end it was all a dream in the bathtub, when she was in Lilly's apartment. This time she rushes out and saves Lilly from shooting herself.
Roger Ebert, who I usually agree with, gave this 4 stars. Roger said: "Sly as a snake, Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale is a sexy thriller that coils back on itself in seductive deception. This is pure filmmaking, elegant and slippery. I haven't had as much fun second-guessing a movie since ".
It's over the top, and outlandish. I really wanted to like this movie. Opening with Double Indemnity, and the great title, but it just didn't work for me. Good noir music, noir plot and femme fatale but it just never came together for me. It was a movie that just seemed to try too hard to be the ultimate noir.
It's over the top, and outlandish. I really wanted to like this movie. Opening with Double Indemnity, and the great title, but it just didn't work for me. Good noir music, noir plot and femme fatale but it just never came together for me. It was a movie that just seemed to try too hard to be the ultimate noir.
Quotes:
Laure Ash: I'm a bad girl Nicolas. Real bad. Rotten to the heart.
Laure Ash: So I went back to the states and got everything a bad girl wants.
Laure Ash: [talking about herself] What happened to poor Lily? She must have drowned and washed out to sea.
Laure Ash: You didn't think I'd give you a gun loaded with real bullets did you?
French cop: The American ambassador beats his wife?
Nicolas Bardo: Yes, that's right. Yes, and she has the face to prove it.