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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Femme Fatale
Warner Bros.


5.7

based on 31 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 25 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong sexuality, violence and language

Starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Eriq Ebouaney, Edouard Montoute, Rie Rasmussen, and Thierry Frémont

A contemporary film noir about an alluring seductress suddenly exposed to the world -- and her enemies -- by a voyeuristic photographer who becomes ensnared in her surreal quest for revenge. (Warner Bros.)

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Brian De Palma
DIRECTED BY:	Brian De Palma
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 25, 2003 Video: March 25, 2003 Theatrical: November 6, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	110 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / France

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is pure filmmaking, elegant and slippery. I haven't had as much fun second-guessing a movie since "Mulholland Drive."

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

Here, the message is the moviemaking and the unparalleled joy you get from a film that can carry you off so completely, making you forget about everything save for the beautiful lies in front of you.

LA Weekly John Powers

I haven't admired a De Palma film since "Carrie," or even enjoyed one since "Scarface," so it must mean something that Femme Fatale gave me one of the best times at the movies I've had this year.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

In his dazzling and luxuriant new thriller Femme Fatale, De Palma turns trash into chic. It's a sexy, violent, glamorous, sinfully funny movie with a surface as hard and brilliant as diamonds.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Much like David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," which it resembles in more ways than one, Femme Fatale makes a rich bouillabaisse out of De Palma's trademark themes and obsessions, stacking references to the heavens and operating with an internal logic that may take several viewings to fully unpack.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The story, to the extent that it is comprehensible, is pretentious and banal, closer to "Vanilla Sky" than "Notorious." 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.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

If you decide at the outset that this needn't have any recognizable relationship to the world we live in, you might even find it an unadulterated delight.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A triumph of style over logic. Although this is not necessarily a good thing, it works spectacularly in this instance.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's hard to call it thrilling -- these aren't characters you actually care about and De Palma isn't as concerned with building tension as playing visual games -- but it sure sparkles.

Variety Lisa Nesselson

An extravagant suspense cocktail of wacky and lascivious ingredients that goes down fine.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

It's a pure (guilty) pleasure trip. That's pleasure, De Palma–style -- twisted, dirty, voyeuristic, a vast glissando of amorality.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Fatale is, truthfully, a mess - an absurdly overwritten Eurotrash thriller that beggars an audience's suspension of disbelief. It's also great over-the-top moviemaking if you're in a slap-happy mood.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Viewers who like their movies to adhere to some sort of reasonable logic, or to at least make sense, will not be pleased by Femme Fatale. For everyone else, it's playtime.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Femme Fatale is glossy, glamorous cinema as collage. Maybe all the pieces of a truly good film noir are here, but the filmmaker has opted simply to toss them into the air and let them fall where they may.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The film is De Palma's tribute to film noir, to Paris and to the cinema itself.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Sexy, witty, energetic and gorgeous, but it is as stripped of the human element (in some of its production design, as well) as a minimalist Calvin Klein store.

Film Threat Darrin Keene

This is a return to form for De Palma, director of ambitious thriller fare like "Dressed to Kill" and "Body Double." Like those films, this one ends in a rather contrived fashion, but it’s a fun ride.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Sexy and passably entertaining, with a plot that's too clever by half.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Even if it's accepted simply as glitter-sprayed trash, sophomorically plotted and incompetently acted, Femme Fatale is a uniquely De Palma kind of effluence, an exercise in auteur self-parody.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A tricksy meta-thriller that, replete with the requisite homage to "Vertigo," sustains its dreamlike glide through a succession of cheesy coincidences and voluptuous cheap effects.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

A passionate film buff's valentine to the two directors he loves most: Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma. The film that this worship has inspired is pretty amusing when the director apes Hitchcock, and pretty awful when he apes himself.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

May not always make sense, but it's crammed with flamboyant images and frisky cinematic pranks -- It's far from a great movie, but there's nothing like it on the current scene.

The New Yorker David Denby

Elegant nonsense. For some years, it's been clear that De Palma's work has lost the jolting intellectual energy and wit of his "Carrie" and "Dressed to Kill" days, and in Femme Fatale the Master is just diddling. [25 November 2002, p. 108]

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Starts with a flourish, staggers along for a bit and finally collapses -- even die-hard De Palma fans, will be left hungry.

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is just plain HOT in this film and other than that...we got ourselves a stinker.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

"Double Indemnity's" darkly poetic carnality is timeless. Trashy, throwaway fluff like De Palma's film can only look bad by comparison.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Nothing short of a disaster -– easily one of the worst movies of the year.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

De Palma fools around with split screens and slo-mo, but no amount of cinematic artifice can varnish over the fact that this is simply a bad film.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Mainly, Femme Fatale is really about De Palma's three favorite things: women, movies and women. And you can either share his guilty pleasures in all their living, breathing, power-edited, overextended glory, or you can get on with your life.

USA Today Claudia Puig

It tries hard to be sexy, mysterious and dangerous, but ends up laughably inscrutable.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

If you look hard, you can make out a story in Femme Fatale, but it has nothing to do with the senseless pileup of jewel thievery, shutterbug voyeurism, and leggy sex bombs so shallow and bad they seem to have come out of a 1978 copy of Hustler magazine.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 25 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Frank O. gave it a5:
Had great hopes for this movie but DePalma just couldn't pull it off...too long, a waste of Peter Coyote's skills as an actor.

Jack gave it a 10:
Great meta-thriller, with the usual DePalma hijinks, choreography and tongue-in-cheek preposterousness.

Elijah gave it a 10:
Gorgeous and trashy, Femme Fatale is the most exhilarating thing you could possibly have seen in the theaters last year. Even if it doesn't completely hold up in the end, it is a beautiful exercise in style featuring a marriage of images and music that will stay with you for the rest of your life. DePalma shows his genius behind the camera here better than he ever has. Highly, highly recommended.

Yoon Min C. gave it an 8:
Empty but full-bodied exercise in cinema, far sleeker and more supple than DePalma's stylistic excesses of the late 70s and early 80s, more confident and masterly as a genre piece, and more elegant as a reshuffling of formula along new contours, and highly captivating as a splicing of noir with mysticism, this is perhaps DePalma's best since Carlito's Way, and certainly redeems his standing after the sheer inanity of Mission to Mars. Actually, both Mission and Femme show us a master in action, and both exceed the boundaries of formualic conventions by stepping into metaphysical territory; but whereas Mission inflates into New Age schlock, Femme Fatale is sinuous and lean, brutally seductive, thereby allowing for more satisfying visceral pleasure and titillating occultish speculations. It's best appreciated as a game, played by Depalma and appreciated by knowing cineastes; not so much the mystery of the story but the construction of action and suspense, and the machinations of the plot. Those who find this hollow have a point; it's not deep and perhaps even stupid and the material is tired just as the notion of the femme fatale; but DePalma's approach is fresh and his command of the medium is masterful and total, and at the very least it deserves praise as a feat of brilliant craftsmanship. Banderas is engaging, Stamos is venomously sexy, and the villains are truly menacing.

Zeljko M. gave it a 2:
Awfull!

Jon K. gave it a 0:
Absolute trash. Plot holes the size of craters, absolutely atrocious acting across the board, and De Palma's love of cripplingly illogical plotlines combine to make this half-baked monstrosity damn-near unwatchable. Casting supermodels in lead acting roles is a questionable tactic at the best of times; in this movie, Romijn-Stamos works extremely hard at looking good while doing nothing with what little she has to work with. Any one of the multiple plot twists that can only be characterized as childish would have ruined the movie; together, they weigh it down like stones in a sack. Being insulted by people is bad enough. But being insulted by movies...folks, that's just beneath our human dignity.

Richard gave it a 7:
A crock, but an entertaining one for the most part. People have been comparing this to "Mulholland Drive," but Naomi Watts is a much more compelling actress than Romijn-Stamos, and I think it's her performance that keeps the film from being entirely successful. Banderas is much more interesting as a shlub, although his swishy act in the middle of the film struck me as curious. Overall, it's a beautiful film to watch, especially the opening heist sequence, but the points it seems to want to make about choices and possible futures is ultimately undercut by its heroine's lackluster acting.

Femme Fatale Warner Bros.

Femme Fatale
Warner Bros.