Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Let’s hear it for the fan who is pure at heart. Like AB King adores Sylvester and Arnold, so does Mr. Beaks adore Brian De Palma.
I think this may well be the single most passionate review for this film that you’re going to read. And, if I do say so, one of the best, too. Enjoy!
FEMME FATALE (w. & d. Brian De Palma)
Brian De Palma’s FEMME FATALE opens slyly with the nude Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) reclining on a bed, smoldering cigarette clutched between her fingers and hopelessly lost in the treacherous universe of DOUBLE INDEMNITY. A few moments later, she will be slapped and chided by her co-conspirator in an imminent diamond heist. His rebuke? “Stop dreaming, bitch!”
Falling under the spell of movies is at the heart of FEMME FATALE just as it’s always been lurking at the (some would say, to belabor the Stanwyck-ian symmetry, “rotten”) core of every film De Palma has ever made, only now it’s the blatantly expressed focal point. No longer content to engage in simple homage, De Palma has instead applied a Pirandellian conceit and crafted an existential lark that amplifies the obligatory elements of the Noir genre and revels in them with a naughty, unabashed glee that unfolds in almost strictly visual terms. It’s as daringly headlong a leap into formalism as the director has ever taken, but unlike RAISING CAIN, which came at the audience like a traditional thriller only to devolve into a grandly staged, yet narcissistic song of praise to the director’s own greatness, FEMME FATALE at least makes an effort to inform the viewer that they are in for a postmodern pisser of a film. As the nameless “Black Tie” (Eriq Ebouaney, so good in last year’s underseen LUMUMBA) goes over the plan with Laure one more time, you can almost hear the symphony warming up as De Palma takes up the conductor’s baton. Once Laure and the audience are all clear on the particulars, the curtain is literally pulled back, and the first movement is underway.
As always, De Palma begins the strange journey in as intoxicating a manner as possible. Here, he nudges along the film allusions by staging the improbable heist at the Cannes Film Festival. Black-clad thieves rappel down air vents and pick off security guards, while their sex-kittenish trump card seduces their target: a spindly supermodel decked out in a gaudy gold-and-diamond set worth millions. In true De Palma fashion, though, the exhilaration of the sequence comes not from the ingenuity of the plan (every caper film convention is cited and ticked off like relative clockwork), but in the exuberant filming of it; his perpetually tracking camera gliding up the red carpet into the Palais des Festivals, down its glitterati cluttered halls and over the stall doors in its women’s room where the coveted, diamond-studded outfit is being tantalizingly peeled off one twenty-four karat layer at a time as two impossibly beautiful women are engaged in what appears to be a mutual erotic rapture. Simultaneously elegant and tawdry, the sequence is capped off with an obligatory betrayal that favors the devious, titular archetype as has happened in numerous Noirs past, leaving only the clean getaway, which is where things get *really* tricky.
Through a ludicrously implausible twist of fate, Laure finds herself mistaken for a grief-stricken French woman who is her exact double. Sure, it’s a bit of a groaner, but what’s wonderful about this twist is Laure’s amused reaction that seems to acknowledge what we already know: these things only happen in the movies. To celebrate her good fortune, Laure unwinds with a hot bath in which she accidentally falls asleep as the water continues to run, eventually and spectacularly overflowing the confines of the tub. The care with which De Palma shoots this sequence should read as a signal to the audience that *something* important is happening here, and, indeed, clever visual clues begin to pop up with the quite deliberate intent of informing the viewer that *this is a dream*. The purpose of the dream, however, remains vague, wherein lies the real, puckish fun in De Palma’s narrative trickery.
Laure’s ensuing, identity-swapping flight from authorities and her revenge obsessed cohorts is the storytelling convention on which De Palma’s entire film hinges, and, as so many films in his canon have done, it unfolds in a heavily stylized, self-reflexive manner that threatens to alienate viewers seeking out a classical, missionary-position narrative safely and comfortably embedded in the trappings of traditional Film Noir. Though there’s certainly nothing wrong with the occasional throwback to the genre’s mid-twentieth century heyday, there are few plot variations that haven’t been worked and reworked a thousand times over (the Noir has probably been “reborn” as many times as the Western), leaving a veteran thriller specialist like De Palma with little choice but to upend formula lest he stare down retirement hacking out polished, but listless facsimiles of his previous glories as so many great directors have done. To that end, I love what he’s done here; Laure, finding herself the femme fatale in a peculiarly movie-like situation, dreams up the rest of the plot that will inexorably follow, dropping in the photographer (Antonio Bandaras) with whom she had a brief run-in earlier in the day as the protagonist. It’s a brilliant, genuinely original tweaking of formula; Laure’s subconscious is warning her that the conventions of the genre have predetermined her fate. According to the Noir, it will not, *can not* end well for her unless she does something that, at the time, would seem completely out of character.
Stylistically, there is perhaps no better late-career comparison than a film like MARNIE, where Hitchcock adopted a deliriously heightened approach as he brazenly examined the themes over which he had obsessed for decades, while, in the process, infuriating critics and audiences alike, many of whom thought they knew roughly what to expect from the Master’s films. Still, the critical outrage that greeted that film was at least partially understandable since such wholesale thematic experimentation was largely absent from Hitchcock’s oeuvre. With FEMME FATALE, however, it’s hard not to be perplexed by the various mainstream critics seemingly determined to interpret the film in a classical suspense framework as if they’ve never seen the director so thoroughly and surreally subvert the genre before. It’s as if such gonzo flights of fancy are only acceptable when taken to a Lynch-ian extreme.
More likely, though, the disconnect has occurred due to De Palma’s relentlessly visual manner of storytelling. Armed with his usual array of flourishes – tracking shots, slow motion and split-screen – De Palma offers up a master class in the sadly outmoded show-don’t-tell technique of filmmaking where nearly every shot has value. Concentrating too much on the dialogue is not only perilous, but, I think, contrary to what De Palma would have the viewer do. Most of the pertinent information is imparted visually, and strategically placed within the frame: notice the strategic placement of clocks in the frame, the inexplicably overflowing aquarium, or the continued appearance of a poster proclaiming “Deja Vue”. And these are just the elements that jumped out on my first time through the film. As is usually the case with De Palma, I have a feeling there’s a good deal more to be found on subsequent viewings.
And I can’t wait to dig back in. Brian De Palma, now well into his sixties, has not only returned to form, but evolved into a more daring filmmaker than I’d ever imagined possible. By conceiving a clever, postmodern antidote to the staleness of the modern-day thriller in which the cold-hearted heroine is able to glimpse her future and enact a change that is in equal parts benevolent and self-serving, he’s, rather amazingly, made his most adventuresome picture since PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, and crafted a genre demolishing masterpiece that might stand as one of the proudest moments of his career.
Don’t stop dreaming, Brian.
Faithfully submitted,
