--- title: "Femme Fatale" year: 2002 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/femme-fatale" fi1m_score: 74 critics_score: 74 critics_reviews: 11 published: "2026-09-20T10:36:02.042863+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T10:36:02.604186+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Femme Fatale (2002) Directed by Brian De Palma · 1h 54m · MPA R · Mystery, Crime, Thriller **Fi1m score: 74** · Critics 74 from 11 reviews *In a sentence:* A diamond heist run from a ladies’ lavatory at Cannes, and it is the most sensible thing anyone in the film does > De Palma opens with twenty minutes of near-silent heist as good as anything he has directed, then spends the rest of the film playing games with his own plot. The games are fun, up to a late turn that will annoy as many people as it delights. ## Synopsis Cannes, during the film festival. Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn) watches *Double Indemnity* on a hotel television. At a premiere, a model, Veronica (Rie Rasmussen), is wearing a gold serpent bodice set with ten million dollars of diamonds. Laure, posing as a photographer, follows her into the ladies’ lavatory, while her partners Black Tie (Eriq Ebouaney) and Racine (Édouard Montoute) wait in the basement to swap the stones. The heist goes right and then wrong, Laure runs with the diamonds, and in Paris a case of mistaken identity offers her a way out of the country. Seven years later she is back as Lily Watts, wife of the incoming American ambassador (Peter Coyote), and a paparazzo, Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas), takes her photograph, which nobody is allowed to take. ## Review Brian De Palma wrote this one himself, and he opens with Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn) in a Cannes hotel bed watching [*Double Indemnity*](https://film.one/film/double-indemnity) (1944), Barbara Stanwyck’s face laid over her own in the glass of the television. That is the film telling you what it is: a thriller about a bad woman, made by a man who has seen every such thriller and wants credit for it. This is the most fun De Palma had been in years, and the fun goes on longer than some people will stand. The heist is the reason to see it. A model, Veronica (Rie Rasmussen), arrives at a premiere in a gold serpent set with diamonds, coiled round her torso; Laure, press badge round her neck, follows her into the ladies’ lavatory and starts undressing her while Black Tie (Eriq Ebouaney) and Racine (Édouard Montoute) cut the power in the basement and swap the stones. Almost nobody speaks for twenty minutes. Thierry Arbogast’s camera drifts through the crowd on the steps and down into the tunnels as if it had a pass to everywhere; Bill Pankow cuts between screening room, cubicle and fuse box so every strand has its own clock; Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score is one slow march that climbs and refuses to arrive. When Laure’s hand reached the last clasp we realised we had stopped breathing a while earlier. It is the best pure staging De Palma had managed since the museum in *Dressed to Kill* (1980). Then the film jumps seven years and slows down. Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas) is a paparazzo assembling a wall-sized photograph of the square outside his window one print at a time. He is hired to photograph the wife of the incoming American ambassador, Watts (Peter Coyote), who never permits it, and he gets her. De Palma stages the stalking in split screen, Bardo and his long lens on one side, Laure on the other doing what she does when she thinks nobody is looking. Banderas plays Bardo as hangdog, easily led and a little stupid, and it is a pleasure to see him play a sap. De Palma casts Romijn to be looked at, and when the script asks her for a paragraph of plot instead she goes flat. She is good at stillness, and better at the switch, the small change in the eyes when she has decided what the man in front of her is for. In a bar she undresses for a stranger while Bardo watches, a woman doing the femme fatale as a job of work, competently, with an eye on the time. Olivier Bériot puts her in black leather and a trench coat, the wardrobe of the films Laure watches, and Anne Pritchard covers Bardo’s flat in photographs until there is hardly an inch of bare wall. The middle is where it wobbles. The plot Laure drags Bardo into is a kidnapping, and it is meant to be silly, with Gregg Henry as Shiff, the embassy’s security man, shouting into phones, and Thierry Frémont’s Serra doing the police work. De Palma does not believe a word of it, and for forty minutes his disbelief is catching; we felt kept busy. The dialogue, in English from mostly French mouths, sounds dubbed even when it is not. There is a late turn we will not describe. We felt cheated for ten minutes, then less so, and by the next morning we had decided it was fair. The most hostile review calls the ending a cheat, and it is, in the way a card trick is. Set beside [*Blow Out*](https://film.one/film/blow-out) (1981) and *Body Double* (1984) it has the same obsessions, watching, doubles, a camera in on the crime, and far less at stake. There is nobody here to care about and the film does not pretend otherwise. What it has instead is lightness; De Palma is working from his own script again, and you can hear it. Certificate 15, 114 minutes; it reached British cinemas on 19 February 2004. Watch it with someone who will argue about the last twenty minutes on the way home. You will want the argument. *Fi1m score 74, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (11) - **Los Angeles Times**, Manohla Dargis (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film an exuberant, blissfully entertaining thriller and one of the smartest, most pleasurable expressions of pure movie love from an American director in years, praising its visual majesty, high-octane jolts, and transporting qualities. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-nov-06-et-dargis6-story.html) - **The AV Club**, Scott Tobias (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a brilliant thriller that turns criticisms of being showy and derivative into strengths, creating a rich, meta hall of mirrors full of humor, suspense, and eroticism. He notes it as a return to form financed outside Hollywood, condensing De Palma's career obsessions for fans. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/femme-fatale-1798198027) - **Film Comment**, Michael Koresky (85/100, inferred): The critic finds Femme Fatale to be De Palma’s queerest film, with its awareness of sex and identity as performances creating exhilarating layers of game-playing and self-reflexivity. The sinuous, virtuosic 20-minute opening heist sequence stands out for its distancing effects and eroticism of cinephilia. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/queer-and-now-and-then-2002/) - **Slant Magazine**, Ed Gonzalez (85/100, inferred): The critic praises De Palma's film as a work of pure aesthetic rapture with sinuous camera movements and dreamlike water imagery that rewards repeated viewings. He highlights the director's self-reflexive use of split-screen, dualities, and correction of noir tropes through the lead performance. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/femme-fatale-dvd/) - **Time Out**, TCh (80/100, inferred): This elegantly dreamy film is as rich and strange as anything De Palma has made, outrageous, provocative and fun with a twist that may alienate half the audience. The visuals are often breathtaking and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos makes a poised anti-heroine. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/femme-fatale) - **Empire**, Ian Johnston (70/100, inferred): The critic notes that this low-budget Euro picture marked a return to form for Brian De Palma despite straight-to-video status. De Palma uses split screen, narrative twists and a strong score to turn neo-noir conventions on their head, focusing on themes of identity and perception; the film is gorgeously shot and nicely noir. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/femme-fatale-review/) - **The New York Times**, A. O. Scott (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the convoluted thriller may not suit viewers seeking narrative coherence or plausible emotion, but highlights its formal dexterity, visual inventiveness, and ability to deliver exhilaration and surprise through style and set pieces. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/movies/film-review-rooting-for-the-thieves-at-cannes.html) - **Variety**, Lisa Nesselson (70/100, inferred): The critic describes it as an extravagant suspense cocktail of wacky and lascivious ingredients that goes down fine, praising Rebecca Romijn-Stamos's performance as a confident predator and the stylish, off-kilter proceedings full of De Palma themes, while noting it may frustrate those preferring straightforward intrigue. [Read](https://variety.com/2002/film/reviews/femme-fatale-2-1200550040/) - **Screen Daily** (60/100, inferred): The film is an enigmatic European art-movie disguised as a Hollywood thriller, with formal brilliance but an over-the-top storyline and emotional froideur that limits mainstream appeal. Buffs will find it an intriguing addition to De Palma's canon. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/femme-fatale/409128.article) - **/Film**, Nick Bartlett (65/100, inferred): Despite its poor reputation, the film is presented as worth revisiting for its visual storytelling, noir and giallo homages, and archetypal characters that allow De Palma’s style to shine. It is called his best work since 2000, though unfocused compared to his peak films. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/751849/the-14-best-brian-de-palma-movies-ranked/) - **The Playlist**, The Playlist Staff (D+/C-): The critic finds the film undermined by a ridiculous twist ending that renders most of the story a cheat, along with weak characterization and plotting. Some credit is given for occasional salacious fun and the sheer watchability of its absurd storytelling. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/retrospective-the-films-of-brian-de-palma-20130828/7/) ## Details - **Director:** Brian De Palma - **Director:** Brian De Palma - **Writer:** Brian De Palma - **Cinematography:** Thierry Arbogast - **Editor:** Bill Pankow - **Music:** Ryuichi Sakamoto - **Production design:** Anne Pritchard - **Costume design:** Olivier Bériot - **Producer:** Tarak Ben Ammar, Marina Gefter - **Cast:** Rebecca Romijn as Laure Ash / Lily Watts; Antonio Banderas as Nicolas Bardo; Peter Coyote as Watts; Eriq Ebouaney as Black Tie; Édouard Montoute as Racine; Rie Rasmussen as Veronica; Thierry Frémont as Serra; Gregg Henry as Shiff - **Runtime:** 1h 54m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 6 November 2002 - **Genres:** Mystery, Crime, Thriller - **Budget:** $35 million - **Box office:** $17 million ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd - The Roku Channel: free, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AT, DE, ES, FR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Body Double* (1984): De Palma’s earlier film about a man with binoculars, and the same shameless nerve. - *Vertigo* (1958), Fi1m 92: The film every De Palma thriller is talking to; watch it and hear the conversation. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/vertigo.md) - *Les Diaboliques* (1955): Clouzot’s schoolhouse thriller, with a bathtub and a turn that still works. - *Bound* (1996), Fi1m 80: The Wachowskis’ first film: a con, a closet and a femme fatale who means it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/bound.md) - *Diva* (1981), Fi1m 80: Beineix’s Paris thriller of stolen tapes and shiny surfaces, from the same city, twenty years earlier. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/diva.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/femme-fatale