Femme Fatale: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies

by Ursini, James

  As the film progresses and the past and present intermingle, the audience watches as Swann humiliates himself over and over again in order to be with Odette. He crashes a party she is attending with another man to the derision of the host; he pays for her trip to Egypt even though he is not invited; and after she stands him up, he goes from restaurant to restaurant frantically searching for her.

  The artist’s troubled muse Nicole (Ornella Muti),from The Girl from Trieste.

  Although she is having sex with other men and women (a fact she denies but of which there is too much evidence for the viewer to discount), he continues to buy her jewelry; make love to her after another has left her bed; and, in general, act the cuckold while attempting to maintain what has become a very thin veneer of dignity and class. He only speaks the truth periodically as when he proclaims his fixation in lines like: “Without it [her love] I’d cease to exist,” and, to Odette: “You have put substance in my life.”

  As much as Swann tries, however, he cannot capture this free and sensual being and lock her away in some gilded display cabinet as he desires. (“I’m not a museum piece.”) The filmmakers, like Proust himself, make an effort to not present Odette simply as a one-dimensional tormentress who taunts and manipulates him in order to accomplish her ends (although she clearly does that). Rather, they give the audience glimpses into Odette’s own psyche, thereby creating sympathy for her.

  A friend of Odette tells Swann with great sincerity that “she adores you.” Odette herself sadly reveals to Swann her own needs and his inadequacies in an earlier scene: “You fear affection ... it is all I look for.” When Swann presents her with an expensive necklace, she looks at it mournfully, as if she had expected something else (an engagement ring, perhaps ?). In the midst of passionate lovemaking, she tells him of her friend, whom a respectable man married and thereby lifted her out of her life. By the end of the film, it is clear that Odette wants the deepest sacrifice as a sign of his devotion and love; that is, he should marry her and risk ostracism by his upper-class friends,.

  Odette does finally get what she most desires. In the last scenes of the movie, a dying Swann returns to his noble friends to attempt a reconciliation for the sake of his daughter and Odette. But they reject him once again. However, the filmmakers refuse to end the film on a negative note; and so, the last shots of the movie are of an impeccably gowned, radiant, older Odette disembarking from a coach and walking jauntily, umbrella in hand, through the park, still the subject of onlookers’ gossip, but secure in the love of Swann and the comfort of a rich woman’s life.

  In 1990, Muti played opposite femme fatale actress Emmanuelle Béart in director Ettore Scola’s adaptation of Théophile Gautier’s novel Captain Fracasse—here called The Voyage of Captain Fracassa. Muti plays Serafina, an actress in a traveling troupe who seduces the bored nobleman Sigognac (Vincent Perez) and enlists him in their troupe. She then shares him with her fellow actor Isabella (Béart) and goes on to make further conquests in their picaresque journey through Europe and life.

  Recently, Muti played the notorious and controversial Mary Magdalene in The Final Inquiry (2006). The oft-told story of Jesus of Nazareth is here presented as part of an inquiry launched by the Roman emperor who sends one of his trusted investigators, Tauro (Daniele Liotti), to find out the truth about this Jewish messiah.

  Traci Lords

  —Crossing Over

  Unfortunately, the name Traci Lords is now inextricably bound to the adult-entertainment industry. The story of the underage girl who with forged documents became one of porn’s most popular stars in the 1980s has been repeated ad nauseam in expose after expose. But what is truly noteworthy abut that story and its young protagonist is that with determination and true grit, Traci Lords left her past behind and crossed over into mainstream cinema—a feat no other porn actor has been able to achieve with as much success.

  A publicity photo of Traci Lords around the time she was an adult-cinema star

  From Cry-Baby, Wanda hitching a ride.Traci Lords displays her trademark pout.

  Lady Rachel (Traci Lords) indulges her desire for incest with her son Jabez (Max Danger), from Deathlands.

  Traci Lords, even in her dozens of porn films, was always a femme fatale by nature. Her aggressive sexuality, her barracuda looks, and punk attitude contributed greatly to her success in adult films but also marked her as a femme fatale or—as Lords liked to call herself—a “sexual terrorist.”

  In 1985 Lords appeared briefly in the Gregory Dark, a.k.a. Gregory Hippolyte, adult film New Wave Hookers. In this slick comic tale of two losers who fall asleep and dream they are pimps in a techno-punk style bordello, Lord appears in cameo as “The Devil,” who proceeds to show the boys who is boss both politically and sexually.

  In 1986 Lords, along with her manager, began to demand more control of her films, and so they formed a production company and produced a kinky, clever takeoff on Beverly Hills Cop called Beverly Hills Copulator. Lords plays a New York cop, Michelle Leon, who goes undercover in Los Angeles to break up a prostitution ring into which she believes her sister has disappeared. Dressed in black leather and sporting a take-no-prisoners attitude, she sets about to disrupt the business by means of sexual prowess as well as her investigative abilities. Lords later appeared in a remake of a 1957 Roger Corman picture, Not of This Earth (1988).

  Lady Rachel (Traci Lords) unashamedly pops an aphrodisiac at dinner in Deathlands.

  Lords began her transition to mainstream femme fatale roles with a minor comedy, Fast Food (1989). In a small but hilarious role, Lords portrays the seductress Dixie Love who is sent in by businessman Wrangler Bob (Jim Varney) to sow the seeds of destruction in a fast food outlet he wants to own.

  In 1990 cult director John Waters cast Lords as the pouting, tough-talking teen Wanda in his homage to 1950s counterculture —Cry-Baby. Set in Waters’s beloved hometown of Baltimore (also the setting for his hit Hairspray), the film pits “squares” against “greasers” in a battle which foreshadows the sea changes about to occur in American culture and politics. Wanda rebels against her square parents, played appropriately by David Nelson and Patty Hearst, and becomes the sexual core of the greasers and the “moll” of leader “Cry-Baby” Walker (Johnny Depp). Dressed in split A-line dresses, slutty pumps, and leather jacket, she terrorizes not only the square girls but their boys as well.

  In 1991 the creators of Married with Children cast Lords in an episode called “Al Bundy, Shoe Dick” as a period femme fatale in a dream sequence in which Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) imagines he is a noir gumshoe. When Vanessa Van Pelt (Lords) enters the room, the camera slides sensually up her black stockings, short skirt, tight 1940s jacket, and Veronica Lake-style hair. The bumbling Bundy opines in mock hard-bitten narration : “She was a sultry thing, dressed to the nines .... hot as my neighbor’s dinner ...” The plot then devolves into a standard television takeoff on period detective stories.

  In Blade (1998), the big-budget vampire film starring Wesley Snipes, Lords plays a vampire “rave girl” named Raquel who seduces a young boy and drags him back to the vampires’ disco lair. The redheaded Raquel manhandles the boy at every turn, squeezing his crotch violently, pushing and pulling him through the meat locker to the disco in the rear. When suddenly the sprinklers in the club open and blood rains down, the drenched Raquel and her vampire clan begin their feeding frenzy. Unfortunately for the viewer, Raquel is destroyed early in the film.

  After crossing over into mainstream cinema, Traci Lords, more refined and sleek.

  Traci Lords as the vamp/vampire Rachel,from Blade.

  In 2001 Lords starred in a sleeper called You’re Killing Me, a.k.a. The Killing Club. The film is a witty dark comedy about a trio of women who, under duress from their leader Laura (Lords), form a club (“better than the girl scouts,” in Laura’s words) whose mission is to eradicate obnoxious men. Laura gets the idea for what she refers to as a rebirth of an “ancient order” of vengeful females when her downtrodden
friend, writer Jamie (Julie Bowen), accidentally stabs her oppressive boyfriend. Once she sees the body and the blood, Laura becomes stimulated physically (she goes out after and eats rare meat) as well as intellectually. She helps her conflicted friend dispose of the body in the public zoo and then lays out her “mission plan” for the order.

  Jamie and later Arlene (Dawn Maxey) are more frightened of the aggressive Laura than they are of the police and so they become reluctant members. Next, after hearing how Arlene’s boss has sexually humiliated her on repeated occasions, Jamie and Laura seduce the boss. When Jamie flubs their attempt at poison over dinner, Laura picks up the reins and delivers a martial-arts chop to the head of the boss—who is trying to molest her in his still idling car—and closes the door of the garage as she leaves. The boss is subsequently asphyxiated. When the trio learns the news, Jamie and Arlene are appalled, but Laura is radiant as she mouths the word “asphyxiated” while trying on a sexy new dress.

  The club ultimately falls apart as Jamie and Arlene refuse to continue the spree of what they call initiating “premature death.” Laura, after chasing them through a construction site, gives up on her friends and continues on her own. Dressed to kill, she hires a taxi and begins a new journey of retribution—“ ridding the world of irredeemable men is what I was born to do.”

  Deathlands (2003), set in a post-apocalyptic earth, gives Lords ample opportunity to display her “sexual terrorist” credentials. She portrays Lady Rachel Cawdor (yes, there are numerous allusions to Shakespeare’s Macbeth). As a teen, this futurist Lady Macbeth marries the decadent lord of Cawdor, an outpost of humans in the wasteland that Earth has become. In addition, she has sex with her stepson Harvey to satisfy her formidable sexual appetite. In order to achieve more power, Rachel forms an alliance with her stepson, and murders his father while he is tied to her bed for some bondage play. Harvey’s brother Ryan tries to foil the plot, but is blinded in one eye and forced to flee.

  Twenty years later Ryan (Vincent Spano) returns to his homeland, somewhat unwillingly. His brother Harvey (Alan Peterson) has descended into madness and brutality like his model—Lord Macbeth. Lady Rachel has become addicted to a futuristic form of the drug Ecstasy, which we see giving her an immediate orgasm (“better than sex”) at a banquet scene. She has also taken her own son Jabez (Max Danger) as her lover, kissing him shamelessly before her dissolute husband at the same banquet scene.

  When Ryan is captured, Lady Rachel attempts to seduce him as well. While tied to a cot with a slave collar around his neck, Lady Rachel mounts him and runs a knife down his body as she proposes a new alliance with him as king. When he does not respond properly, she grinds her stiletto heel into his groin and drags it across his stomach, scarring him. Lady Rachel and Harvey are both defeated in the final sequence of the film by Ryan and his lover Krysty (Jenya Lano) as both of the villains end up falling to their death in their own torture pit filled with flesh-hungry boars.

  Sharon Stone

  —Basic Instinct

  By the force of her performance as Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct (1992), Sharon Stone has had more influence in shaping the image of the post-1990s femme fatale than any other single actress. Her leggy form, smoky voice, and cool persona made her a perfect lethal lady for the “girl power” third wave of feminism. But before that landmark film, Stone was already laying out the blueprint for her rendering of the femme in such films as Blood and Sand (1989) and Total Recall (1990).

  In Blood and Sand (1989), Stone took on the Nita Naldi/Rita Hayworth role of Doña Sol, the sadistic Spanish temptress who turned the bullfighter Juan Gallardo into her plaything and destroyed his life in the process. The times of course allowed Stone to be much more blatant in her portrayal of Doña Sol. The sex scenes were more graphic than in any of the earlier versions, with nude scenes that would soon become a transgressive trademark of the actress. The next year Stone reworked the femme fatale for a small part as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s duplicitous, combative wife Lori in the science-fiction hit Total Recall. The physical battle between Lori and Schwarzenegger’s Douglas is totally believable with Lori delivering repeated blows to Douglas’s crotch and even offering to tie herself up for some S&M to stop Douglas from leaving on his mission.

  Impressed with Stone’s ability to project sexual danger, Paul Verhoeven, the director of Total Recall, cast Stone in his next film—Basic Instinct. Basic Instinct was a huge worldwide commercial hit, largely due to the daring performance of Stone. The plot deals with a San Francisco detective, Nick (Michael Douglas), and his attempts to understand/apprehend/save/possess the cool and elusive writer Catherine Tramell (Stone). While investigating an S&M sex murder in which a blonde tied her lover to the headboard of his bed and then killed him with an ice pick (the scene that opens the movie), Nick follows the evidence to the prime suspect: Catherine.

  Obsessed Nick (Michael Douglas) watches the dangerous Catherine (Sharon Stone) work an ice pick in Basic Instinct.

  Catherine wields her ice pick like a phallus. the point of that symbol, from Basic Instinct.

  Catherine is unlike any woman Nick has ever met. She keeps him off balance at all times with her wit and sexual daring. Typical is the now legendary crotch-flash scene in the interrogation room where Catherine turns the tables on the visual dynamic inherent in most movies of this type, where the woman is the passive object of the male gaze. (See a similar scene in Laura for comparison.) Catherine instead uses her keen intelligence as well as her overt sexuality to lead a group of leering male cops where she wants them to go, refusing even to put out her cigarette when they demand it and answering their questions in her own arrogant way.

  Nick and Catherine lost in amour fou, from Basic Instinct.

  In fact, in many ways, Catherine is the metaphorical writer of the movie. She controls the action through her novels. As Nick becomes more obsessed with her, especially after their first sexual encounter in which she ties him to the bed like the murdered man in the first scene, she directs him where to go and how to act. She inserts his character into her newest novel; she lures him to a disco, where he becomes inflamed when he sees her having sex with her lesbian lover in a bathroom stall; she writes scenes for the novel that work themselves out in reality like the murder of his partner; and she even solves the crime, in theory, by revealing that the psychiatrist Beth (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is a stalker who loved Catherine in college and who has now become a murderer.

  In 2006, Stone reprised the role of Catherine in Basic Instinct 2. According to interviews, one of the reasons Stone did this film was to show that a woman moving into middle age could still be sexually powerful on screen (for which she was derided by many male critics who lambasted her for appearing nude at the age of forty-eight). In this film Catherine moves to London but the aura of crime and kinky sex follow her there. The object of her games this time is a psychiatrist, played by David Morrissey, who is assigned by Scotland Yard to investigate and analyze her. Needless to say, he finds his match and ends up like Nick, spellbound.

  In the moody, neo-noir film The Specialist (1994) Stone portrays May Munro who as a child witnesses the brutal murder of her parents. In reaching adulthood, she identifies the murderers (members of a Cuban-American drug cartel in Miami) and tries to hire a freelance explosives specialist to eliminate them. The emotionally troubled specialist—Ray Quick (Sylvester Stallone)—hesitates taking the job and instead proceeds to follow May around the city when she decides to eliminate the murderers herself. Their relationship develops over the phone as Ray cannot restrain himself from calling May, attracted to her deep and sensual voice. The conversations begin to act as phone sex for the couple as we see Ray sweating as he frantically works out while replaying their conversations intercut with May as she moves sensually around her room—nude and silhouetted against the windows of her apartment.

  Basic Instinct 2—Catherine (Sharon Stone) returns to engulfing men in her 2006 sequel to her wildly successful Basic Instinct.

  Un
able to forget May and fearing for her safety when she goes into deep cover as the lover of the sadistic gangster Tomas, played by Eric Roberts, Ray accepts her commission. But as May tells the specialist in a note she leaves after their first steamy sexual encounter: “I am not a woman you can trust.” The film soon reveals that she has a second mission. She has been hired by Ray’s nemesis, ex-CIA agent Ned Trent (James Woods, to bring Ray out into the open so that Ned can bring down his ex-friend for the mob. But Ray is far too committed to May to allow her to slip away. He rescues her from Ned and then finishes her job by eliminating not onlyTomas, but his father, who is the true source of power in the cartel.

  Stone finally received an Academy Award nomination for her yeoman’s work as a femme fatale (a rare event in the world of lethal ladies) for Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1995). Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) forms an obsession for Ginger McKenna (Stone) when he sees her verbally castigate a mark she is hustling and then proceed to disrupt Rothstein’s casino by throwing all her chips in the air and laughing. As the camera tracks into the face of the riveted Rothstein, we see her exactly as he sees her, floating through the casino in slow motion as he says in admiration, “What a move!” Taken with her raw power and her ability to manipulate the men around her, he proposes marriage. Although she initially rejects him, she decides to accept when she sees his devotion—evidenced by the lavish gifts he surrounds her with—and his initial willingness to give her wide berth.