Femme Fatale stars Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as bad girl Laure, and kicks off with a sophisticated heist sequence at the Cannes film festival, where the plan by a gang of diamond thieves to steal body jewellery from a supermodel known only as Veronica (Rie Rasmussen), goes horribly wrong and the shooting starts. Black Tie (Eriq Ebouaney) gets wounded and goes to prison, while sexy blonde Laure assumes the identity of suicidal runaway Lily and flees to the USA.

Seven years on, luckless photojournalist and wannabe collagist Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas) is hired for the paparazzi mission to get the first ever pictures of the reclusive wife of Bruce Watts (Peter Coyote) - the American ambassador to France, a job at which he succeeds despite interference from security agent, Shiff (Gregg Henry). Eventually, however, Bardo regrets his actions and tries to make amends, only to become embroiled in a fake kidnapping scheme to extort ransom from the moneyed Watts...

De Palma's cinematic technique, such as it is, remains faultless. From startling camera angles to a variety of pastel and noir colour schemes, it's always arresting. Where Femme Fatale goes off the rails is with the scarcely adequate performance of Romijn-Stamos in dual roles. Far too much of this sensational and exploitative melodrama relies on the leading lady's acting talents (which, it must be said, are as scanty as her night scene's costumes), and no matter how often Laure/Lily tells Bardo (and, by implication, the audience) that's she's thoroughly wicked, there's just no hope of convincing anyone familiar with numerous other examples of the archetypal film noir female of the title that Rebecca fits the bill. Alongside the bold Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct or ultra bitchy Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction, poor Romijn-Stamos is unfortunately lacking in both spirit and polish. Although she looks absolutely stunning and does make a great supporting player as blue-skinned Mystique in the X-Men films, Romijn-Stamos simply hasn't got the expressive depth or the ballsy attitude to carry a movie such as this.

Happily, the director's thematic and contextual references to his own back catalogue - Mission: Impossible (1996), Body Double (1984), and especially Blow Out (1981), itself inspired by Antonioni's Blow Up (1966) - are not particularly intrusive or too self-indulgent, instead seeming less a straightforward repetition of earlier works and more like a tolerable auteur signature. As with De Palma's most successful productions, Femme Fatale is more concerned with provocation and emotional resonance than with logic or plausible story development - hence the premonitory 'dream' sequence taking up so much of this film's running time...

“You don't have to lick my ass, just fuck me.”

Words like these are certainly not spoken by a wimpy woman waiting for some masculine savior. A seductress who laughs at succeeding in inspiring two men to fight over her following a particularly trashy striptease. A master manipulator who deftly organizes one lucrative score after another, Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) beautifully hearkens back to the dangerous dames of a Dashiell Hammett novel. In a breakthrough performance, considering her other forgettable parts, Romijn-Stamos gets the delectable job of commanding a truly multi-layered screen presence through the various personas into which her character metamorphoses, which most women are too scared to tackle.

After not being terribly impressed by Mission to Mars or Snake Eyes, it's good to see writer/director Brian DePalma back to such contextually pulsating material. Between a camera that switches from character to omniscient points of view without warning, to keeping the individual motivations in constant suspect, DePalma brings a crime story full of adrenaline and intellectual stimulation to the screen with Femme Fatale.

Though his past few films have been underwhelming, you can see how these previous experiments allowed DePalma to fine tune small degrees of perfection in Femme Fatale, especially from Snake Eyes. Spatial relations have a deeper impact on the people, and vulnerability is subtly invoked in long takes that define objects or settings as closer than you may have previously guessed. The use of split screen is more thematically woven, not simply another cool tech show.

But the story, so sparse in physical plot, is yet so exhilarating in quietly dealing with unleashing chain reactions in lives of those around you. A quick description is basically a woman's continual escape from fellow criminals she has screwed out of some major dough, but it doesn't do the film justice to merely concentrate on this bare premise. Because the fascination shines through in the seemingly minor details that only begin in the opening shot of barely-covered Laure coldly watching predecessor Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) in Double Indemnity.

The Cannes heist that starts the film rolling is ingeniously shot, using split screen, security monitors, and weaving around different crowds, keeping adrenaline at a nice peak by impressively condensing time as all the technical details of pulling off the crime are given attention. A cat, humorously materializing, adds a touch of laughter and Laure's pleasuring of the almost naked model in the bathroom isn't given so much time as to feel like soft-core porn.

Shortly afterwards enters Antonio Banderas as greasy photographer Nicholas Bardo. He's often gotten the opportunity to play comedy, romance, or action figure singularly in any number of easily boxed genré films, but in Femme Fatale he gets an extraordinary taste of each while still embodying the slightly self-centered stance of a voyeur. He has room to explore the range we may forget he has from seeing such sillyhood as 13th Warrior, and he fulfills the half-schlub, half-thrift spirit with total force. Pedro Almodovar should be thanked once again for bringing him to America's attention.

Now, on a different tangent but one that shouldn't be ignored, is the rampant criticism based on the notion that Femme Fatale is solely the engineering of male sexual fantasy. That because you see skin, and it's not male skin, and because Laure's character rides through (no pun intended) several sexually charged scenes, that the film serves no other purpose than to be eye candy for horny men. Normally I don't like to venture too much into personal experience reflected (or not) on screen, or place my theories against other critics because everyone is entitled to an opinion, especially if they can back it up.

But the title alone denotes that the central woman we'll be watching will not be the stereotypical “golden heart abused” or “under-appreciated martyr”, and this violent femme is just as important to play onscreen, without the standard broken-home backstory leanings of other feminine villains. If men can play these roles, why shouldn't women? And if Femme Fatale is playing to male hormones because Romijn-Stamos slinks around in an uncomfortable-looking Parisian bra, it's equally playing to her absolute domination over every situation. DePalma may be bent on showing raw stimulation, but he is just as focused on illustrating the feebleness it creates. It is just as feminist to not need a male protector, and to use his own weaknesses against him, as it is to be Little Ms. Perfect. In fact, it's imperative to see women play the “bad girl”, especially when it's written this impeccably, and Romijn-Stamos deserves kudos for pulling it off so damned well. Why do we seem so adverse to accepting a woman who isn't a victim?

DePalma may not be wholly effective in writing/directing character study per se (Carlito's Way's strength comes more from Al Pacino's great acting than from intelligent conversation), but Femme Fatale isn't a reflection of human nature so much as an exploration of adventure. He deftly captures the heart-pumping reigns of pacing and exacting dialogue with expert camera usage and energetic editing. There are hidden meanings in almost every exchange, and just when you think you know where you're being led, the focus is shifted to shed new meanings on past sequences.

This mixture of visual goodies doesn't cease throughout the two-hour adventure. Be it the gorgeous Parisian architecture or the beauty of the title role, Femme Fatale is a nonstop rush of excitement. It also revives the thrill of the crime story that more recent ventures like Heist so painfully missed. The ending, which I won't give away, is nothing short of perfect.

It's depressing to see the ingenuity of films like Femme Fatale and The Truth About Charlie (the delicious new morsel from Jonathan Demme, also shot in Paris) be disregarded on such simplistic terms as how the female is assumed to be viewed by their director, especially when they do such a bang-up job. Then again, the genius of films is frequently revisited years later, so perhaps Femme Fatale will someday receive the glory it so well deserves.