By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * *)
Brian De Palma: now there's a director who brings new meaning to the phrase "body of work". Body Double, Dressed to Kill, Carrie, Scarface, WiseGuys, Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes, The Bonfire of the Vanities would have kept Six Feet Under's Fisher brothers
in work for decades. They wouldn't have had to fall back on Federico's loan. De Palma's latest is another erotic thriller in the Dressed to Kill fashion.
It opens in 2001 with a $10 million diamond theft, the twist being that the diamonds are on the body of a supermodel at a Cannes Film Festival premiere, and they are taken by Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) as she seduces the model in a restroom. Ash then heists the diamonds from her own gang.
Not long after the theft, trying to avoid being spotted by upset former colleagues in Paris, she is mistaken for a grieving widow, taken home from a funeral, and finds herself with a ticket to New York and a passport with a photo that looks exactly like her. She is photographed by one of the paparazzi, Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas).
Jump-cut seven years later to the day when she returns to Paris as the wife of the American ambassador (Peter Coyote) and is snapped by the same snapper. Worried that the guys she double-crossed will double-cross her, she wants the film. No surprises for guessing what she'll have to do to get it, except that Antonio Banderas is not wearing diamonds at the time.
Be prepared for De Palma to once again pay homage to Hitchcock, reference long-gone movies, and drop countless twists, red herrings and long passages that turn out to be nothing more than a dream.
Some may find it a fascinating display of the director's art. I'm with the guy who wrote, "Femme Fatale feels like nothing quite so much as a middle-aged moviemaker's attempt to surround himself with beautiful, half-naked women".
DVD features: movie (114min); From Dream to Reality, Dream within a Dream and Behind the Scenes of ... features; Dressed to Kill montage.
