Archstone Distribution’s Julia (review) is now in limited theaters and on VOD platforms.
Directed by Matthew A. Brown, and starring The Human Centipede‘s Ashley C. Williams, “Julia is a neon-noir revenge thriller centering on Julia Shames, played by Williams, who after suffering a brutal trauma, falls prey to an unorthodox form of therapy to restore herself.”
Bloody Disgusting caught up with Brown to celebrate the best femme fatales in film.
Here’s a quick breakdown.
• Audition (1999, dir. Takashi Miike)
• La Femme Nikita (1990, dir. Luc Besson)
• Leon: The Professional (1994, dir. Luc Besson)
• Under the Skin (2013, dir. Jonathan Glazer)
• Damage (1992, dir. Louis Malle)
• Lolita (1962, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
The first things that leap to mind are Takashi Miike’s ‘Audition’ and the work of Luc Besson (‘La Femme Nikita,’ ‘Leon: The Professional’, as well as ‘Subway’), which is why I put them at the top of the list. But really the list has no order and I included a 6th as I couldn’t not include Kubrick’s ‘Lolita,’ which if ever there was a birth of a femme fatale, this is it.
But certainly the first that rears its head is the crazy, complicated and highly disturbing character in Takashi Miike’s ‘Audition.’ I saw this film by chance in the middle of the day all shredded from caffeine after a writing stint in an arthouse cinema in Pasadena. I think I was only 22 at the time, and I’d never been exposed to this sort of more realistic psychological as well as very graphic horror—let alone Japanese, or even Asian—cinema in general. I remember feeling unsteady afterwards, like I’d been summoned into this whole other cinematic universe and story world, so dark but simultaneously so beautiful.
Re: ‘La Femme Nikita.’ I think this one speaks for itself, and is a true icon for the modern day femme fatale in cinema. It’s no surprise to me that Besson keeps coming back to it in various forms. Here he really nails the fusion of his larger than life stylishness/‘cool’, with a more emotional even intimate human story. And then with ‘Leon: The Professional’—tho I’m not sure it qualifies as ‘a femme fatale film’ since Portman’s character is only 12—he only perfects this fusion of what I think of as cinematic cool fused with a very real and emotional human story—about these two lost and broken souls coming together amidst in this sea of chaos. Portman’s character’s mixture of wide-eyed innocence and almost nonchalant street cred wisdom simply stunned me at the time.
‘Under the Skin’ I think has a stroke of genius at its core, taking some of the most powerful aspects of the femme fatale, the mysteriousness, the mystique, the danger, the power of seduction emanating from the very pores of the character, but in this case filling the femme fatale form with an alien presence, who Itself starts to grow into and take advantage of said form—so filled with layers and for me one of the more striking meditative pieces of cinema I’ve seen in a while.
Juliette Binoche, in Louis Malle’s ‘Damage,’ for me is a testament to the more complex modern day femme fatale style character—which makes me want to add: without the marriage of a rich, complex and oftentimes broken character on the page with an actor who can achieve that level of depth and subtlety in portrayal, we’d basically be left with no genuinely memorable femme fatales. That dark and wounded soul that propels the kind of extreme behavior often associated with these characters must be lived in all its perfect madness!