Okay, I promise to shut up about "Femme Fatale" after this. Here's what Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News has to say about De Palma's latest. 

10:59:13 AM    Say Something []

The Louis Vuitton Fall 2002 Hawaii International Film Festival may be over, but its memory lives on! I still have to post my impressions of three excellent documentaries: "Sister Helen," "Ruthie & Connie," and "Bowling For Columbine."

Also, a so-so Asian-American flick, "Better Luck Tomorrow," and a screening of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers' outstanding commercials of the year. 

10:27:27 AM    Say Something []

Apparently, Brian De Palma doesn't mind if some key plot points of his new "Femme Fatale" are revealed. He believes that it might actually help audiences enjoy and understand his film more. Here's an excerpt from an excellent interview by the Baltimore Sun's Michael Sragow:

De Palma: "My initial idea was that a femme fatale double-crosses everyone during a heist. Her partners relentlessly come after her, almost like the gunmen in The Killers. But when she stumbles into a bar at another town, someone walks over to her and says, "Oh Judy, I'm so sorry about your loss." And when she walks to a bus stop, someone else tells her, "You can't leave town now; the funeral is in 20 minutes." Fortunately for our femme fatale, the real Judy is suicidal - so it's easy for her to steal Judy's life.

"I held onto that idea, and then I thought: What would happen if I made part of the story a dark premonition - and what if it enabled the femme fatale really to change her life, without downplaying how cynical she will always be for her own self-preservation. I realized that what you'd get is a very tongue-in-cheek happy ending that would drive some people nuts and put a smile on the faces of the others. I knew it was a risky thing to do.

But it made sense to me. Because a lot of this comes from my own life. People write about me as if I'm always cribbing ideas from other movies, as if I'm an empty shell with no experience. But how many times have I been watching a movie late at night and fallen asleep and dreamed the movie? That's exactly what happens at the start of Femme Fatale. I've had dreams that were premonitions and that I tried to prevent from happening. I actually ran into someone who was the exact double of my older brother in Florence, Italy. And when I showed Mission to Mars at the Cannes Film Festival I walked down that red carpet with my girlfriend, who was wearing Chopard jewelry. [Romijn-Stamos steals Chopard jewelry at the start of Femme Fatale.] So I say, write what you know! I'm not sitting in a room watching movies 24 hours a day."

Another interesting tidbit from the interview: the film's opening jewel heist takes place at a film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. De Palma wanted David Lynch to portray himself attending his own premiere of "Mulholland Drive."

Here's Sragow's review of Fatale from the Sun.

As for me? We caught it last night and enjoyed it. I felt it was about twenty minutes too long, my fiancee pointed out too many gratuitous scenes, but the ending is a whopper. I was almost ambivalent midway through, getting a little impatient with the film in general. But in the end, De Palma held on with an audacity rarely seen in cinema nowadays. Fatale would make a great double feature with Mulholland Drive. 

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