Today’s Prayer Focus

Femme Fatale

MPA Rating: R-Rating (MPA) for strong sexuality, violence and language.
Moral Rating: Extremely Offensive
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults
Genre: Thriller
Length: 1 hr. 50 min.
Year of Release: 2002
USA Release:
Rebecca Romijn Stamos and Antonio Banderas in “Femme Fatale”
Featuring Rebecca Romijn, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Gregg Henry, Rie Rasmussen
Director Brian De Palma
Producer Tarak Ben Ammar, Marina Gefter
Distributor Distributor: Warner Brothers Pictures. Trademark logo.Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company

Viewer CommentsSend your comments
Negative
Negative—The movie begins with immoral behavior between 2 women and got worse from there. Not only was the movie slow, but the plot seemed weak and boring. The heroine of this movie used sex, suicide, power, and money for her own gain. The movie offended my Christian values so much that I had to leave without seeing the end. No one should see this movie.
My Ratings: [Extremely Offensive / 1]
George Vasquez, age 48
Positive
Positive—Femme Fatale is a surprisingly wonderful film, a joyous celebration of the film noir genre. It is certainly not a film for children, or for people that for whatever reason feel the need to be “uplifted” by every film they see, though that is exactly how I felt as I watched this cinematic ballet unfold.

The film’s storyline is secondary to its style, that MUST be recognized to appreciate this film. But its style and its fondness for the film noir genre is positively bubbly. Director Brian De Palma pulls out all the stops—split screens, dual realities, dream flashbacks, moving cameras, etc.--to patch together this gorgeous pastiche. It doesn’t hurt that the entire film is shot in beautiful French locations.

The content will obviously come as objectionable to the puritanical perspective (I happen to think this also contradicts the Christian perspective). There is flashy sexuality, violence and vulgarity aplenty, but this is a crime movie and an examination of the noir genre…
My Ratings: [4½]
Peter Weets, age 33
Movie Critics
…disjointed and slow moving in many spots… strong foul language, graphic violence and many sexually immoral acts that pagan critics like to describe as erotic. This movie should have been rated NC-17…
Movieguide
…For the most part, Romijn-Stamos could store her wardrobe for this movie in a thimble. Femme Fatale is one long Victoria’s Secret ad, perhaps to keep our minds off the muddled, senseless plot…
Bill Muller, The Arizona Republic
…quite literally too dumb to be believed… By the end, the movie’s a mess…
Harper Barnes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch