The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, June 15-21
Femme Fatale (2002)
Directed by Brian De Palma
The near-wordless opening jewel heist at Cannes postpones dialogue as long as possible, an ideal opening setpiece example of De Palma’s peculiar take on Pure Cinema, where camera movement is everything and plausibility or dramatic integrity a snide joke. When the self-penned dialogue kicks in it’s ripe cheese, monotonely spat out by Rebecca Romijn as a cold-hearted grifter vs. a bad guy who, after years in prison, emerges in the unwashed blood-stained shirt he entered in. The structurally ingenuous finale plays twice, a masterclass in tweaking Rube Goldberg variables as plotting; this is unabashedly virtuoso work with no undue claims on your heart or brain. Vadim Rizov (June 18, 6:30pm at the Metrograph’s De Palma retrospective)
