Femme Fatale vs Sisters

Femme Fatale, the latest thriller from Brian DePalma, sets out to be a sexy, twisty hybrid of Mulholland Drive and Basic Instinct. Um, would that be silly? And oddly filmed?  And questionably acted?  Cause if so, then mission accomplished. 

Femme Fatale stars Rebecca Romijn Stamos as…what was her name again?  I’m not looking it up.  Let’s just call her Femme Fatale.  In the opening scenes, Femme Fatale is filmed awkwardly from behind.  She has to keep positioning herself with her back to the camera, even when the scene would like it otherwise.  I suppose the idea was to keep the identity of FF secret from the audience for as long as possible, but since, upon the reveal, the most you’re going to get is “Hey, it’s Rebecca Romijn Stamos,” I don’t really see the point.  She’s a blond jewel thief posing as paparazzi at the Cannes Film Festival.  While her accomplices are tunneling and drilling and safe cracking and so on, FF seduces an actress in the ladies’ room and swipes her jeweled metal bra thing.  Unfortunately, before she can make tracks out of Cannes completely, FF has her picture snapped by another photog, played by Antonio Banderes.  Back in Paris, FF has dyed black hair, and luckily, is hiding out in a house where a woman who could be her twin lives.  The other woman is recently widowed, and is American, so FF takes her passport and heads for the States.

Cut me some slack here; I saw this mess a few weeks ago, and I’m trying to keep it all straight.

So, in America, FF meets a Very Rich and Important Man People Want to Photograph.  They marry and move back to Paris.  Banderes is still there and eventually snaps another picture of FF, because Very Rich’s wife brings a high dollar with the tabloids.  From there, lots of double crossing, and backhanded dealings, and thievery and switcheroos take place.  De Palma has fun, as he always does, with split screen and playing scenes back to show they might be more than we thought.  Femme Fatale is kind of fun, actually, especially when we realize that what we’ve been seeing is not necessarily what we’ve been watching.  There are clues, like the perpetually overflowing aquarium, and the clocks that appear to be…but no.  I won’t give away the one cool thing Femme Fatale has in store. The direction of Femme Fatale is standard DePalma, meaning it’s fun and stylish, but this is one where stylish wins about ten minutes in.  DePalma is making a movie of a certain mood (i.e. that whole Mulholland Drive/Basic Instinct thing from earlier) but he’s not really worried about telling a story or bringing any characters to life.  Banderes and Romijn Stamos are fine in their parts, I suppose, although Romijn Stamos sometimes has trouble putting much spin behind lines like “I’m bad.” 

I’m not sure what kind of mood Femme Fatale will put you in (I’ve heard some people love it), but I think, in this case, a little hair of the dog is the perfect dessert..  Order up a little more DePalma, specifically Sisters, and not only will you see a vintage DePalma thriller, but you also might find more to like about Femme Fatale after all.

Okay, before you go watching Sisters, or even reading this review, there are three things you should know:

a. Sisters is a Brian DePalma movie from 1973.  It is not the early ‘90s TV show featuring Swoosie Kurtz and Bruce   Springsteen’s ex-wife (and Sela Ward…hubba hubba).

b. It stars Margot Kidder as recently-separated Siamese twins.  One of them might be a psycho killer.  The other is a model and actress.  They’re French Canadian.  Can’t just go into a movie like this cold.  You gotta stretch first, get ready. And…

3.  It stars Margo Kidder as recently-separated Siamese twins.  You were still with me after b?  Aw, I’m touched.  You did read that they’re French Canadian, right?  All right then, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Sisters, if you haven’t guessed, rocks.  ROCKS. Brian DePalma can be so cheesy and gimmicky, but since Sisters has a gimmicky plot to begin with, and it was a gimmicky time moviewise, then the planets have aligned properly (and the planets only align for Brian DePalma once in a while.)  I know I already told you this, but…Margot Kidder stars as recently-separated Siamese twins.  She’s French Canadian (I assume they both are.  I could be wrong. It’s that kind of movie.), and it doesn’t seem significant, but she mentions it like ten times. She’s all “I ehm Franch Cana-dee-un. I ehm mo-dell and ack-tress.” Okay, so I don’t know what your impression of Margot Kidder might be, but she is smoking circa 1973.  She lives in this weird Nice Apartment that has tons of empty floor space, like in a sitcom, and can be seen from every apartment window in the neighborhood.  Seriously, Margot has no privacy.  She’s a swinging independent lady, and brings home a gentleman for an evening of kicking it French Canadian.  There’s a weird exchange of information, timewise, but no matter.  Soon, it’s morning, our gentlemen caller is getting knifed in the face hard, and tons of Blood #5 is splashing around.  Yuck.  A reporter lives across the way, and sees everything.  She interferes, and is laughed off by the cops.  No blud here, Off-ee-sur.  I ehm on-lee mo-dell and ack-tress. I av-ont keeled any-wone.

Soon, the intrepid busybody reporter follows the clues to the creepiest sanitarium ever, where she gets a glimpse of Margot’s past.  In extra creepy black and white footage, we see Margot, as conjoined twins (in a remarkably impressive effect, especially for 1973), and then apart.  It’s like silent film footage, mixed with junior high science films from the 1950s, mixed with snuff.  There’s hardly anything to it, but it feels like something we should not be watching.  In a good way. This scene, coupled with the scariest score ever (from the guy who did Psycho.  I think this one is better), had me turning on extra lights (I watch these things at like 3 in the morning.  I’m asking for it.)

In one of those kickers that used to happen in movies all the time, but we’re all too cool for now, the reporter’s ranting makes her look crazy, plus she’s getting too close to the case, so…she’s locked into the sanitarium as if she were the insane murderer.  Rock. I’ll leave it to you to find out what else happens.  If you go to the trouble of watching Sisters, you should get some of the surprises.   

Sisters, of course, treads dangerously close to Sobaditsgoodville, but believes in itself so much that the scares remain.  Femme Fatale, on the other hand, pulls into Sobad and leaves the engine running just in case, only to forget where they parked. To be fair, Sisters has the benefit of being thirty years old.  Any unintentional laughs can be chalked up to the times.  Oh, they thought they were being scary, they’re just being silly.  Ha, look what passed for sexy in 1973! So, instead of being critical, we become nostalgic.  Maybe someday, years from now, I’ll watch Femme Fatale again and treat it the same courtesy.

Femme Fatale:  C
Sisters:  B