EXAMINING FEMME FATALES
IN THE MOVIES

By Pat Sakuma

While I did not conduct a comprehensive search of every femme-fatale movie ever made, what I did learn is something I think we already know--the industry’s track-record for producing such movies are few and far between--and male writers wrote them all.

This, however, is a new century and the events to date prove how fast things change. The week High Crimes (starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman) came out, a major network TV newscaster commented how female leads were now leading the box office sales. With Jodie Foster’s new movie, The Panic Room, maintaining its No. 1 position for its second week with ticket sales of approximately $18.5 million (for a ten-day total of $58.8 million), and High Crimes premiering at No. 2 with sales of approximately $15 million, the TV newscaster poised the question of whether there would be a three-sweep at the box offices with Murder By Numbers starring Sandra Bullock hitting the theaters the week of April 19, 2002. Let’s cross our fingers.

But let’s look back at some of those few and far between, but nonetheless memorable femme fatales of past movies: Phyllis Dietrichson (the late Barbara Stanwyck) in Double Indemnity (1944), written by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, who also directed, Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter), in Play Misty For Me (1971) screenplay by Jo Heims and Dean Riesner, and story by Jo Heims, and Clint Eastwood who also starred and made his directorial debut, Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) in Body Heat (1981), written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who also made his directorial debut, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) in Basic Instinct (1992) written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven, Bridget Greogory (Linda Fiorentino) in The Last Seduction (1994), written by Steve Barancik and directed by John Dahl, Violet (Jennifer Tilly) in Bound (1996), written and directed by the Wachowski Brothers. You may have other favorites, but this is what I discovered about these femme fatales.

Of the six, there were only two femme fatales I liked in the beginning and liked, even more, at the end: Bridget in The Last Seduction and Violet in Bound. Why?

In The Last Seduction, Linda Fiorentino’s Bridget Gregory commands the screen, scene after scene. Her fast-talk, blunt yet scintillating, only matches her razor-sharp mind and sheer determination to keep the $700 grand, drug-loot, she steals from her husband Clay Gregory (Bill Pullman), a resident-doctor with an illicit side-business. What does he expect after he slaps her, then says he’s sorry, and tells her she can hit him anywhere, hard? Bridget walks the walk and talks the talk, and has no qualms about leaving men behind in the dust. She never bats an eyelash nor looks back at her misdeeds or indiscretions.

When Mike Swale (Peter Berg), tries to pick her up in the small-town bar she stops at, he gets the table turned on him. Bridget then sets the tone of their relationship when she gives him “the test” to check out his equipment. Who else can dupe Mike to go to back to Manhattan to kill her husband for her so they can share the money? But sharing is not in her vocabulary. Poor Mikey, who is smart enough to be an insurance claims-adjuster, but temporarily disabled by lust, does not see or refuses to believe that he’s just her patsy. He’s in love, but he wants their relationship to be more than just sex. When she realizes he’s hesitating, she decides it’s time to see Mike’s ex-wife, who tells her about their little secret. Of course, Bridget goes back to town and uses it to get Mike to do her dirty deeds.

In Bound, Violet (Jennifer Tilly), seems almost like a caricature of a mobster’s mistress, and yet, she transforms her dire circumstances through her steel will and determination. Violet’s inner strength reveals itself slowly, as she, little by little, keeps on defying Caesar, her boyfriend (Joe Pantoliano). You don’t expect this prostitute to get so far in life. But not only does she escape her abusive life with Caesar, she gets the loot, and girl, Corky (Gina Gershon) too!

We delight at the unexpected twists to our sense of expectations. Being a mobster’s mistress has taught Violet the right stuff: how to survive, to use her assets—her charm and sensuality to get by, and wait for the right opportunity. I don’t think Violet will be heading for jail, as she seems to have pulled everything off. You tell yourself you shouldn’t like her so much because killing is a sin, and morally wrong. But the Warchowski Brothers made Caesar despicable enough and allowed his death to be in self-defense so you say its okay to like Violet, and applaud her in the end. I think Tom Jones’ song says it all at the end, “She A Lady,” and what a lady she is.

At the other end of the femme fatale spectrum is whom I concluded was the most cold-blooded one of the pack: Kathleen Turner’s Matty Walker in Body Heat. Matty’s haunting treachery knows no bounds. Seductively playing the damsel in distress, Matty cleverly hides her diabolical brains. She too doesn’t think twice about double-crossing and using everyone and anyone to get what she wants--a carefree live sipping exotic drinks in exotic places without having to earn a living.

Despicable, yes. But she may have fooled you like Ned Racine (William Hurt) in the beginning. It takes a while for you to catch up with her true intentions. The same goes for Ned, an attorney, who may be lazy, but is no body's fool, except Matty's. After she steams up the scenes and Ned's primordial instincts, Matty finally wins him over and gets Ned to help her kill her husband. But of course, there should not be a happy-ending for killers. Ned gets to go directly to jail. Yet, for Matty, it certainly looks like she succeeds in cashing out of her prior life to tan at that exotic beach.

You wonder if Ned, after figuring it all out while he glares at her picture and notation in her high-school yearbook, will be able to get his detective-friend to tract her down. It was a hot summer that summer down in south Florida, and the sweltering heat turned on the lethal bite of this icy black widow.

Comparing Matty with Phyllis Dietrichson (the late Barbara Stanwyck) in Double Indemnity is like doing a double take. They could be mother and daughter in another life or another story. Although their personas seem to parallel each other, there is one thing that distinguishes Phyllis from Matty. Double Indemnity evolves into a double-tragedy because you feel sympathy towards the murderers at the end, who die at each other’s hand. So unlike Matty, Phyllis realizes she indeed loves Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), but then it’s too late.

To me, Basic Instinct's Catherine Tramell portrays the “what if” Phyllis got a second chance to make it up to Walter, if a sequel to Double Indemnity had been made. But that’s where their similarities end. Perhaps it is because Phyllis’ demeanor, I believe, reflects the sensibilities of the ‘40’s.

The ‘90’s allow Catherine to flaunt, strut, and cross her legs like no other. In these ways, she resembles Bridget in The Last Seduction. Like Bridget, Catherine toys with men, and when she no longer needs them, she tosses them aside for dead. The significant difference between them, however, is that Bridget is willing to kill for money, but Catherine is willing to kill for the sheer pleasure of it. Catherine doesn’t have Bridget’s handicap.

You see Catherine is worth more than the Picasso hanging in her San Francisco, Pacific Palisades’ home. She seized the opportunity back as a teenager when she honed her talents for the kill and then inherited her parent's money. In this sense, Catherine does not share the same pedigree, as the other femme fatales listed above so far. While she epitomizes pure evil, just like Matty, she, at least, has an overt psychiatric excuse. She can’t help herself, just like the other women killers she befriends in the story. As a writer of murder mysteries, Catherine knows at the end someone has to die, as she tells her current love-interest, detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) when he asks, “How will it (the story she is currently writing about using him as the model for her main character) end?

True to form, she plots further to kill or get others to kill the people who could incriminate her, including her lesbian love-interest, Roxy (Leilani Sarelle), Lieutenant Nilsen (Daniel von Bargen), Gus (George Dzundza), and Dr. Elisabeth ‘Beth’ Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), who just so happens to be the gal Catherine had a lesbian affair with in college, and who is Nick’s former girlfriend. So why do you like Catherine in the end? She’s a serial killer after all. I guess it is because many of us still believe in rehabilitation. Catherine, at least, is trying to resist her otherwise basic instinct, at least for the time being.

I should add, it also helped that Nick isn’t such a pushover, like Gregory or Mike in The Last Seduction, lustfully greedy like Walter in Double Indemnity and or Ned in Body Heat, or abusive like Caesar in Bound. And besides, Catherine thinks Nick, deep down inside, is really no different from her.

Now talk about irresistible impulses, Evelyn (Jessica Walter) in Play Misty For Me not only has a prior medical history of psychosis and a previously suicidal episode, she gets pushed over the edge after her more or less one-night stand with Dave Garver (Clint Eastwood). Blame it on the fact that Evelyn has no outlet like Catherine, the writer, to deal with her inner conflicts. Evelyn seems to be molded from the same pedigree as Catherine, but it seems that she cannot reconcile her life as a ‘70’s feminist with her ‘50’s like-naiveté.

At first, Dave seems infatuated by Evelyn because no guy had been able to score with her all night at the bar, as he learns from his friend, the bartender. Evelyn soon teaches Dave she is not an object, like the chips and corks the men had been playing with to whet her interest. Dave soon finds out that Evelyn just can’t take no for an answer after he tries to end their short-lived relationship to get back with his girlfriend (Donna Mills). But leave it to Evelyn to make Dave’s life hell with her obsessive, and suicidal behavior. And when she cunningly targets his girlfriend (Donna Mills) for a premature life, Evelyn turns out to be darn right spooky.

As these six femme fatales prove they follow a tradition yet they create a mystique of their own so much so we recall them with fond memories. Therefore, with the ever increasing success of female leads at the box office these days, perhaps we will see more femme fatales at the movies, and with equally if not more complex psyches than in the past

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