Femme Fatale (Brian De Palma, 2002)

[Monterey Jack]

Your persistent advocacy for this release is appreciated by fellow fans like me. Someone at Warner wanted to keep Monterey Jack mild.

[Monterey Jack]

For me the most bizarre detail was, why was Erik Ebouaney wearing the same outfit, complete with copious blood, seven years after the heist when he gets out of prison???

Isn't that just the movie trope of "when you get out you put on what you had on when you came in"?

Roger Ebert pointed out how this is a subtle allusion to the film's narrative trickery, i.e.

Spoiler

blood would not still be bright-red after left to soak into clothing for seven years.

It's very intentional, cleverly so.

[feihong]

I accidentally found out about the ending during its release and it turned me off so much I've never bothered with the film, despite liking a lot of De Palma's stuff. But Domino's disgust and everything else here is pushing me to pick this one up. A curse upon all of you if it is not as good or bad as anyone here suggests.

This discussion does make me a little interested to see the film again. I saw it in theaters, based on the reviews at the time. I remember being interested in the Bolero heist, weirded out by the subsequent narrative twists and turns, and left ultimately wondering what it was all about. I didn't hate it, and don't remember thinking it was very bad, but I don't remember liking it at all, either. But I guess I've got to confront it again––especially having seen a lot of DePalma films in the time since.

[Finch]

Shout have confirmed that the film is getting a new scan.

NEW 2K Scan Of The Interpositive
NEW De Palma Repertory Player – An Interview With Actor Gregg Henry
NEW Shaping De Palma – An Interview With Editor Bill Pankow
From Dream To Reality Featurette
Dream Within A Dream Featurette
Femme Fatale: Behind-The-Scenes Featurette
Femme Fatale: Dressed To Kill Montage Featurette
Theatrical Trailer (English And French)

[tolbs1010]

Received and watched my copy yesterday. Not exactly a stunning upgrade but it will have to do. Unlikely this film gets any further upgrades.

The film remains a visual and aural feast cobbled together from bottom-shelf story ingredients--like most of De Palma's originals. If narrative coherence, believable character motivations, and sharp dialogue are your prime requisites, look elsewhere. If masterful composition, camerawork, music, and editing can carry you along in a film, then there is a lot to like here. The opening scene is one of my favorite openers ever--a wonderfully fluid 4.5 minute single take with Eriq Ebouaney commanding the scene. He nails it.

A top 3 or 4 De Palma for me, along with Blow Out, Phantom Of The Paradise, and Scarface.

[Rupert Pupkin]

I agree; it's my last Brian De Palma favorite movie.
Regarding the transfer, big disappointment because it's not better than the WEB 1080 release which I have grabbed in the past.
a X4 transfer would show better what we can barely distinguish from scenes to scenes : the use of "glow"/"halo effect" lens for instance to emphasize the dream in a dream sequences.
I think that when you know and live near Paris and hear the French dialogues, the movie is even more pleasing.
The Vertigo obsession (Rebecca is a blonde, a brunette, etc...) even from the spiral shot of the the plane reactor, the Blow Out/Up references, etc...

I think that Rebecca Romijn Stamos was the perfect lead actress for the strip tease scene in the backroom/bar scene (I like tall girls), her French (which is good even better and more geniune than the true French actors in this movie), Antonio Banderas gay-routine (that said, the hotel receptionist in Eyes Wide Shut is as good) when he visited her in her hotel room to find a floppy disk (when he knows how to be "sober" in Almodovar's "Pain and Glory", everything is "too much".
But we needed something too big to be true, even grotesque, bigger than Body Double, even for a dream- which we don't know if this is a dream in a dream, another fantasy-fetishizing movie like Body Double (one of my top favorite from this Brian De Palma's "path")
and there is even though a kind of fragility, sadness in the bathroom first scenes and some others, and I think that Rebecca did a good job. The piano version in the end of the Bolero is sublime.

I love the constant quotes or "inception"-inner-quotes- (like you- I love the long opening a clin d'œil (revenge?) to Impossible Misson with the variation of the Bolero, the use of split screen with every past B.De Palma's techniques (split screen, use of a setting to create a split screen (the commissariat scene for instance or the "you known girls" pipi-chic-room at the beginning, the bad French actors and dialogue, the cat cameo, etc...)
I'm French, and it's now a testimony about Paris, with these shops (hum), the streets... you know that Brian was kind of addicted to some movies when he did Body Double and the "backroom"/bar scene is priceless with the (oh my god they already use an auto-tune at that time ?! ](*,) ) "ça fait du mal, ça fait du bien" improbable song and with posters of Marc Dorcel infamous French VHS (you can ID now thanks to the HD resolution these posters) - I'm sure Brian saw these videos in Paris (me too).
Now, it's very old; 20 years ago.
I remember I saw it in theatre in France, with a theatre full of senior, old people Pensioners (like in Harry Nilsson's song "I'd Rather Be Dead") who went to see the movie. Apparently the Pension organizers did not know what it was about - you could not tell with the French theatrical poster.
All were drooling from the kissing-robbery-luxurious scene to the end of the movie. Me too, with my bib.
It makes me kind of sad; after Covid, this is a kind of au revoir to Paris.

my favorite B.De Palma movies (and not necessary in this order) : Phantom Of The Paradise, Carrie, Obsession, Dressed To Kill, Body Double, Blow Out, Scarface.