“I’m your fucking fairy god-mother.“
What’s it all about? Laure (Rebecca Romijn) double-crosses her associates during a diamond heist, stealing away to the States with ten million dollars in jewelry and another woman’s passport.
From what I’ve seen of Brian De Palma’s body of work, I cannot understand for the life of me how he was such a leading figure of the New Hollywood movement. To be completely honest, I’ve only seen two of his films: “Body Double” (1984) and “Femme Fatale” (2002). But if these are any indications of his other work, I don’t have a single impulse to watch anything by him whatsoever. And I was excited to watch “Femme Fatale”. I’m such a big fan of heist and crime films but this I couldn’t stand. There’s a sense of voyeurism in his films that is both indulgent of the director and artificial in its presentation. It’s like watching a teenaged boy’s wet dream — and a very poorly imagined one at that.
Favourite Scene: My favourite — and the only aspect of the film that I appreciated — was the photography mural that Nicolas (Antonio Banderas) creates throughout the film. I paused my DVD so that I could get a closer look at the mural and its composition was just beautiful.
Notes: Directed by Brian De Palma; Produced by Tarak Ben Ammar; Written by Brian De Palma; Starring Rebecca Romijn, Antonio Banderas; Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto; Cinematography by Thierry Arbogast; Editing by Bill Pankow.
Sasha James, otherwise known as The Final Girl Project, is a twenty-something Torontonian with an unhealthy amount of her week reserved for film and television. She also moonlights as The Doctor's companion on Saturdays. 
I’ve been steadily going through his work and I’m coming around to him. I’m not out of his ’70s stuff yet, but his early satires (especially Hi, Mom!) are waaay transgressive and bold as hell. I also like Carlito’s Way, which is the most recent film I’ve seen by him; that’s basically Scarface with subtlety and a heart.
@Jake Yeah, I need to give this guy some benefit of the doubt. Carlito’s Way looks good. “Body Double”, however, was so awful everything good in the world seemed to fall off the face of the planet while I was watching it. So, so bad.
I’ve heard that Body Double is bad even from those who love De Palma. the best they can say for it is that it was a pretty good Hitchcock homage until it became a piece of shit.
@Jake It’s just… awful. Nothing else can be said about it.