by MATTHEW HAYS

I’ve often said that the world’s population can be broken into two groups: those who think filmmaker Brian De Palma is cool and intelligently referential, and those who think he’s a hopelessly derivative fool.

Those who fall into the latter category had best stay away from Femme Fatale, De Palma’s latest feature film. This is the director indulging himself, injecting his movie with ludicrous plot twists, entirely unsubtle voyeur thematics, slutty women, split-screen action and lapses into slo-mo. The audience I saw the film with (at an avant-premiere on Monday) didn’t all seem to get it: this is primarily a comedy, in which De Palma goes for self-parody. Those who loved his finer—and crazier—work, like Body Double, Sisters and Obsession, will get a supreme kick out of Femme Fatale.

Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, who is fine in the lead, plays a thief involved in an elaborate heist scene in the film’s opening moments. She and her collaborators are set to steal a woman’s outfit, a slinky bit of jewellery that acts as a sort of swimsuit. This meticulously planned crime takes place during a premiere at the Cannes Festival, a typically blunt bit of self-conscious De Palma filmmaking.

After double-crossing her collaborators, Romijn-Stamos finds herself desperate to find a passport to get out of France. One of the evil types she was working with had her passport, but died when the operation went awry. In another use of mirror doubles (think vintage De Palma doing Hitchcock), Romijn-Stamos finds herself in the home of her never-before-encountered lookalike, a woman devastated by the deaths of her husband and child. Romijn-Stamos looks on as the woman blows her brains out; she then assumes her identity and heads for America. A twisted romance with Antonio Banderas follows.

Those who would be foolhardy enough to actually take any of this seriously would do better to steer clear of this film. But those who are fans of De Palma’s outrageous gimmickry—count me among them—should see Femme Fatale. Its full-on craziness makes it one of the funniest comedies of the year. :

Femme Fatale is now playing

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