Femme fatale [DVD]

Brian de Palma’s exciting and kinetic celebration of cinema has a frankly ludicrous plot involving diamond smugglers, a violent, beautiful and ruthless lesbian anti-heroine, and an audaciously over-the-top climax. But none of that matters for this strikingly shot film, beginning at the actual 2001 Cannes Film Festival and culminating in a breathlessly executed finale on the streets of Paris, is a joyful celebration of the possibilities of action cinema. De Palma has always been one of Hitchcock’s staunchest heirs and “Femme fatale” is a continuation of that master’s pleasure in creating a virtuoso cinema of spectacle, technique and purely cinematic language. From the sharpness of Bill Pankow’s editing to the sublime use of split-screen and subjective camera, from the clever pastiche of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score to the crisp cinematography of Theirry Arbogast, “Femme fatale” is a film in love with cinema itself. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos makes for a suitably sexy and dangerous noir heroine; Antonio Banderas is the mug who falls in love with her; and there are guest cameos by Cannes Film Festival director, Gilles Jacob, by French director Regis Wargnier and French actress, Sandrine Bonnaire.