Topic: sexuality
Not long ago, I had the privilege of watching the 2002 Femme Fatale French mystery film directed by Brian De Palma.
The plot summary
The main star Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijin) engages in a diamond heist in Cannes, double-crosses her accomplices and then escapes to Paris, France. There she stumbles across her own lookalike (a distraught woman) who commits suicide, affording Laure the opportunity to take her identity and flee the country to the United States of America (Blasser & Blasser, 2008). There she gets married to a rich man who is posted as Ambassador of USA in France. Laurie (now as Lily Watts) returns to Paris where her past begins to haunt her. A Spanish photographer, Nicolas Barto, takes her picture and in effect establishing the stage for a motion of events as the evil Laure is force to resort to low, underhanded means in attempt to protect her former identity and evade her ex-accomplishes who are still in pursuit of the stolen diamonds. To do this, Laure manipulates her husband Bardo to the extreme.
Stereotypic portrayal of women in the film
On one side, the Femme fatale depicts the main female cast as one who employs sexual attractiveness together with ruthless cunning to manipulate men so as to gain power, independence, money, or all three at ago. She does not assume the conventional roles of a devoted wife as well as loving mother which the mainstream society expects of women (Blasser & Blasser, 2008). However, her transgression of social norms is portrayed as leading to her own destruction in the end along with the men who find favor in her. In this respect, therefore, femme fatale’s portrayal of women seem to compliment the existing social order especially its rigidly defined gender roles through its building up of the powerful, independent woman then destroy her in the end. Women are presented as dangerous, corrupt, and irrational and thus worthy of punishment. The femme fatale propels the action in the way of disaster, initially by having Laurie try to escape from her relationship with Whit and thereafter manipulating two men who try to love or tame her.
In addition, the film portrays that the destructive struggle for independence is in reaction to the conditions that men place upon them. As such women are often lacking the sense of self-determination. Furthermore, the depiction of women in the film is also stereotypic in the sense that the images of conventional women are usually bland to the point of parody (Brewer, 2005). The femme fatale is over-focused on the male-female relationship and typically resorts to murder as the only means of escape for the woman. As such the film does not necessarily portray marriage as heaven for women as evident in the case of Laurie (Blasser & Blasser, 2008). The film also greatly, in a stereotypic way, depicts powerful women as aberrations that must be brought to destruction. The destruction of the women is seen as something that restores a preferred social order. Women are thus generally painted as lacking clear moral or personal identity, hopeless, paranoid, and doomed (Brewer, 2005).
References:
Blasser, J. John, & Blasser, M.L. Stephanie. (2008). FILM NOIR’S PROGRESSIVE PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN. Retrieved on March 25, 2012 from: http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/essays/progressive.asp
Brewer, Chad. (2005). THE STEREOTYPIC PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN SLASHER FILMS: THEN VERSUS NOW
