6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A con-woman tries to straighten out her life, even as her past comes back to haunt her.
Starring: Rebecca Romijn, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Eriq Ebouaney, Edouard MontouteThriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
5.1: 2540 kbps; 2.0: 1627 kbps
English, English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Femme Fatale (2002) opens with a film-within-a-film. The camera slowly pulls back as a young woman watches (on a now-vintage TV set) Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity (1944), one of the most classic of all films noir. This is apropos since writer/director Brian De Palma is making a neo-noir and will be reworking many of the genre tropes in his picture. Over the next two reels, De Palma reworks some of them in a brilliantly conceived attempted heist at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival where his titular character, Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn), poses as a fake paparazzo on the red carpet. Director Régis Wargnier (playing himself) is accompanied by his guest, the model Veronica (Rie Rasmussen) who, unbeknownst to Wargnier, is Laure's girlfriend. Laure is in cahoots with Black Tie (Eriq Ebouaney) and Racine (Edouard Montoute). Their elaborate scheme calls for Laure to snatch Veronica's serpentine gold brassiere (worth $10 million) and replace it with a fake one during a sexy and sensual encounter between the two beauties in the ladies' room. But does Laure follow through with Black Tie's instructions?
Applauding a good fight.
Scream Factory's presentation of Femme Fatale derives from a recent 2K scan of the film's interpositive. De Palma's twenty-sixth feature appears in its original theatrical exhibition ratio of 1.85:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 (disc size: 46.77 GB). It took nearly two decades for Femme Fatale to reach physical HD and the wait was worth it. Warner Bros. released its initial DVD in 2003, followed by a reissue in 2015 under the Warner Archive Collection banner. Those discs displayed the film in 1.78:1. There was moderate edge enhancement on the US and Australian standard-definition transfers. My research also indicates that the 2004 Universum Film PAL disc applied noise filtering on its transfer. Fortunately, the Scream transfer doesn't boast any EE or DNR. The image appears film-like throughout. Debris is kept to a minimum. The only print damage I spotted is a couple of light scratches that flicker very briefly during the beginning of the scene set in the south of France. Scream has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 34000 kbps.
Scream has provided a dozen scene selections for the 114-minute film.
Scream has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (2540 kbps, 24-bit) and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo mix (1627 kbps, 24-bit). I mainly concentrated on the 5.1 mix, which delivers excellent balance across the full sound spectrum. There isn't that much separation between individual sounds, though. The English and French dialogue is clear and well-pronounced. The sounds of snakeskin boots on the Parisian streets are specially accented on the sound track. Ryűichi Sakamoto wrote a masterful score that benefits from the lossless tracks (but no isolated score, unfortunately).
Scream includes two sets of subtitles. English subs automatically generate when there's spoken French. If the viewer selects "on" from the subtitle popup, s/he will get English SDH that will also give a transcription of the English dialogue. There's one typographical error: "just" is misspelled as "jus."
Scream has licensed the four featurettes and two trailers from the Warner DVDs. It also produced two recent interviews.
Femme Fatale finds De Palma at arguably his most cinematic with the auteur's split screens, deep focus (or split-focus) compositions, roving camera, crane/overhead shots, and Wellesian dissolves on full display. Nothing is what it seems as De Palma frequently plays with the viewer's perceptions of reality. At least two viewings are warranted to have a solid grasp of everything going on. I haven't seen all of the gorgeous Rebecca Romijn's films but Femme Fatale has to rank near the very top. Scream Factory delivers a fine 2K restoration from a recent DI that Warner gave them. Scream has brought over most of the supplements from the DVD editions and also recorded two new interviews that are pretty informative. Femme Fatale is a MUST OWN for De Palma fans!
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