Femme Fatale

Movie brat Brian De Palma (Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars) slithers his camera through erotic noir as though he’s trying to make the Anaconda version of a Eurotrash Vertigo as channeled through David Lynch. Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as seductive black widow) uses steamy lesbian sex as a smoke screen for an intricate but ridiculous jewel heist at the 2001 Cannes film festival. She flees to America after a double-crossing and a coincidental identity theft and reinvents herself as the wife of a high-profile politician (Peter Coyote). Seven years later, she returns to France, and a former paparazzo (Antonio Banderas) takes a picture that threatens to expose her jaded past. Though the main characters claw at each other’s libidos, the incoherence and pointless amorality here left me mostly scratching my head and contemplating the importance of a good hair dye.