Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Femme Fatale Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson July 6, 2022

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.

De Palma crosscuts as many as four lines of action. While Veronica makes out with Laure, Wargnier waits for the former to return as he and other festival guests watch the French director's Est - Ouest (East/West, 1999). The control room guards are too distracted by the attractive guests arriving at the festival to notice that Racine is in a scuba wetsuit entering an air duct. There's also the bartender, Pierre (Daniel Milgram), who's purportedly the heist's "inside man." With technical virtuosity and expert storytelling, De Palma cuts back and forth between all these characters and their locales. Since Femme Fatale relies on surprises throughout its intricate and carefully plotted narrative, I don't want to reveal anymore about its story.

Femme Fatale Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

Femme Fatale Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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. Ryûichi 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."

Femme Fatale Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Scream has licensed the four featurettes and two trailers from the Warner DVDs. It also produced two recent interviews.

• NEW De Palma Repertory Player – An Interview with Actor Gregg Henry (14:16, 1080p) - Henry explains why he thinks De Palma enjoys working with him. He delivers a fairly solid overview of every role he's appeared in for the director, starting with Scarface (1983). His most interesting comments are about Raising Cain (1992). I was most interested in hearing his thoughts about Body Double (1984) and while he remarks about it twice, he doesn't supply that many background details about the production or his performance. I don't know what questions Edwin Samuelson asked Henry but I wanted to hear a lot more. In English, not subtitled.

• NEW Shaping De Palma – An Interview with Editor Bill Pankow (20:01, 1080p) - Pankow appears on Zoom where he's apparently interviewed in his home office/library. (Thankfully, there are no audio glitches or video breakup.) He opens by describing his apprenticing experiences as an associate editor under Jerry Greenberg on De Palma's pictures during the early to mid '80s. He's served as the main editor on most of the director's films since Casualties of War. Pankow explains how he cut the opening sequences of Snake Eyes and Femme Fatale. Spoiler alert on Domino (2019) because Pankow goes into some detail on how the climax of De Palma's most recent film unfolds. This covers more ground than the Henry interview. In English, not subtitled.

• Dream within a Dream Featurette (23:43, upconverted to 1080i) - produced by Laurent Bouzereau, this is the best vintage featurette of the four. De Palma and his cinematographer Thierry Arbogast explain how they filmed the exterior and interior scenes of the complex sequence at the Cannes Film Festival. Also interviewed are producer Tarak Ben Ammar, visual consultant/special art projects technician Bart De Palma, composer Ryûichi Sakamoto as well as actors Rebecca Romijn, Rie Rasmussen, and Antonio Banderas. Warning: If you've never seen Femme Fatale before, don't watch this prior as it divulges several key story events! There's a lot of B-roll footage, including Sakamoto performing on piano. Displayed in non-anamorphic 1:85:1 and 1.33:1. In English and French with English dubbing for DP Arbogast's comments. Not subtitled.

• From Dream to Reality Featurette (11:23, upconverted to 1080i) - De Palma comments on classic film noir actresses as well as on his actors Rebecca Romijn and Antonio Banderas, who are also interviewed along with Tarak Ben Ammar, Peter Coyote, and Gregg Henry. The interviews are interspersed with behind-the-scenes footage showing De Palma working with his crew and directing the actors. Presented in letterboxed 1:85:1 and 1.33:1. All interviewees speak in English, not subtitled.

• FEMME FATALE: Behind-the-Scenes Featurette (4:41, upconverted to 1080i) - a pretty brief EPK piece that alternates between movie excerpts, B-roll footage, and interview snippets of De Palma, Romijn-Stamos, and Banderas. In English, not subtitled.

• FEMME FATALE: Dressed to Kill Montage Featurette (1:50, upscaled to 1080i) - a clip reel of selected moments from Femme Fatale along with freeze frames from the film.

• English Theatrical Trailer (2:19, 1080i) - Warner's US trailer of Femme Fatale presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (256 kbps). The image quality is very good.

• French Teaser Trailer (2:04, upconverted to 1080i) - an unrestored French trailer of Femme Fatale shown in non-anamorphic 1.85:1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (256 kbps). The original English audio hasn't been dubbed into French. Content-wise, this the superior of the two trailers. It doesn't give away as much as the American trailer.

Femme Fatale Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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!