Femme Fatale (2002)


Rebecca Romijn           Laure Ash/Lily
Antonio Banderas         Nicholas Bardo
Peter Coyote             Bruce Hewitt Watts
Eriq Ebouaney            Black Tie
Thierry Fremont          Serra
Jean-Marie Frin          Louis
Philippe Guegan          Bespectacled Man
Matthew Geczy            Embassy Guard
Alain Figlarz            Sex Shop Man
Edouard Montoute         Racine
Rie Rasmussen            Veronica
Gregg Henry              Shiff
Fiona Curzon             Stanfield Phillips

Directed by:             Brian De Palma
Produced by:             Tarak Ben Ammar, Mark Lombardo, Marina Gefter


Cool precision and venomous beauty entwine in the striking figure of Laure Ash, a woman who can only 
be expected to do the unexpected. A master of manipulation and guile, Laure plays a crucial role in 
a sultry jewel theft and then abruptly leaves her life of crime--and her bloodthirsty cohorts--behind 
her. In a surreal transformation, Laure refashions herself in the guise of a respectable married woman 
with a high profile political life and soon captures the attention of Nicolas, a soulful ex-paparazzo 
mesmerized by the elusive and enthralling adventuress. Attracted to the enigmatic Laure but serving 
an agenda of his own, Nicolas shatters her carefully crafted world with one shutter click of his 
seditious camera. Suddenly exposed to the world and vulnerable to her enemies, Laure is determined to 
use her considerable assets--and Nicolas' voyeuristic instincts--to reinvent her identitiy and once 
again escape her past. But as she ensnares Nicolas in her calculated seduction, Laure finds her quest 
for revenge complicated by their mutual attraction. 

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The thief Laurie Ash steals the expensive diamond jewel called 'Eye of the Serpent' in an audacious 
heist during an exhibition in Cannes 2001 Festival. She double-crosses her partners and is mistakenly 
taken as Lily, a woman who lost her husband and son in an accident and is missing since then, by an 
ordinary family. One day, while having bath in Lily's bathtub, Lily comes back home and commits 
suicide. Laurie assumes definitely Lily's identity, goes to America where she marries a rich man, who 
becomes the Ambassador of USA in France. When Laurie returns to France, her past haunts her.

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If you like narrative coherence, plausible emotion and accomplished acting, "Femme Fatale," the 
breathtakingly convoluted new thriller from Brian De Palma, may not be for you. It is, however, a 
reminder that there is sometimes more to movies than character and story, that formal dexterity and 
visual inventiveness and some nice-looking people can be the vehicles of exhilaration and surprise. 
These effects, above all, are what Mr. De Palma is after, and the first half of "Femme Fatale" 
provides them in abundance. The story, to the extent that it is comprehensible, is pretentious and 
banal. But Mr. De Palma proves that, in the absence of insight or ideas, some amazing things are 
possible. It is possible, for instance, to be entranced by a movie without believing it for a second.