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Created Jun 02, 2009 04:23AM PST • Edited Jun 02, 2009 04:23AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   Exhibiting the same visual panache attributed to the likes of Dario Argento, Brian De Palma exhiliratingly creates an aesthetically supreme dismantling of the thriller-noir in his brilliant, and therein underrated, “Femme Fatale.” Rebecca Romijn-Stamos stars as in the dual role of Laure and Lily, the former an on-the-run con-woman who screwed over her partners in crime, the latter an emotionally shattered woman grieving the death of her husband and daughter. Colliding in a way De Palma sublimely manufactures — in their first unbearably tense scene, Laure watches from hiding as Lily attempts to take her own life — the two of them ultimately become one in the same, further encounters coming with Antonio Banderas’s former paparrazo, Peter Coyote’s American ambassador and the vengeful team-mates Laure tricked.

   De Palma’s constructed a compulsively watchable visual experience with “Femme Fatale,” opening with a hyper-sexualised sequence that tantalisingly introduces Laure and ending in a way that beautifully brings together the cast of characters in ways not previously envisioned. Water is, as with humankind, the life force of De Palma’s film, expert metaphorical uses therein applying either in the contrasting versions of Laure/Lily scenes, another in which Laure attempts to receive a passport in the unforgiving rain and an absolutely gorgeous underwater shot of Romijn-Stamos seen before “Femme Fatale” takes an unexpected shift backwards through time, are just a threesome of the sequences De Palma, a veteran filmmaker with a nonetheless uneven filmography, shooting each with the prowess and skill of a studied master.

   The notion that Laure is trying to straighten her life out for the better allows the audience to forgive her the several misdeeds she commits along the winding road to apparent salvation. Even when Romijn-Stamos plays her as conniving and morally dubious, one can root for her knowing she’s got an eye on a more humble future. Her seductivity, meanwhile, goes a long way towards making “Femme Fatale” an even more lustfully appealing pot-boiler. Romijn-Stamos is appropriately sexy that a scene featuring her tease-dancing about a pool table pulls the viewer into the scenario just as much as it does the misguided participator she has sat watching before her (Subsequently, Banderas arrives with some whoopass.). Basically, De Palma pulls us into his fluid cinematic wringer, having us experience everything Laure/Lily experiences. Like the perfectly unbearable “Carrie,” “Femme Fatale” equates a personal experience. This movie is an ingenious, rapturous delight.

4. Acting

   Perfect 5.0

   Romijn-Stamos was perfectly cast as Laure/Lily, showing off a greater range of emotions than one would anticipate from an actress whose first scene of the movie involves the use of little but her natural seductivity. This beautiful woman has more weapons in her arsenal than fierce good looks, and superbly works with every element writer-director De Palma’s scrip thrusts upon her. Her visual anguish during the alluded to shot in which she observes suicidal alter-character Lily place a gun to her temple is devastating as much because of how Romijn-Stamos plays both the on-screen characters as the implications De Palma affixes the scene with.

   In the biggest supporting role, Antonio Banderas wavers between devious/self-serving and palpable concern. His relationship with Laure, evolving in unanticipated ways from the initially shallow bond the two form (in pursuit of considerable financial gain, no less) makes an incisive comment on how people use their sexuality and attitudes towards profit to overlook that which is right before their eyes. By the end, the story of the two comes full circle (or at least as full-circle as it can come in a film with such a trickily happy conclusion can), and Banderas shares a great chemistry with Romijn-Stamos — they make their relationship, warts and all, feel real.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    “Femme Fatale” is Brian De Palma’s best film post-“Scarface,” a cinematographic delight with satire and classical knowledge of genre functions coming together superbly to create a film that, were it not plagued by a general mix of negative and positive reviews, would seem a movie quite impossible to dislike. Every shot is brought spectacularly to life, placing you into just about each moment that unfolds ahead of you. Visually splendid, expertly layered and disarmingly personal, “Femme Fatale” is one of the greatest films of the 21st century thus far.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Really Great 4.5

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 3.3

17. Sex Erotic 3.5

18. Violence Brutal 2.8

19. Rudeness Nasty 3.6

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.1

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.1

23. Biological Surreal 2.1

24. Physical Surreal 2.1