Salma Hayek as Satanico Pandemonium, the Aztec vampire princess in From Dusk till Dawn.
Béatrice Dalle
—The Earthy Sensualist
Béatrice Dalle epitomizes the earthy, dangerous femme fatale in both her personal and screen life. Her wide, sensual mouth, gap between her front teeth, dark looks, and free and easy sexual manner typify the sensualist. In addition, Dalle has been a target of the scandal press in Europe with her several run-ins with the law, her affairs with a notorious rapper, and her recent marriage to a convict.
Dalle brought her earthy sensuality to the screen in her first movie, the international hit Betty Blue (1986). The film opens on Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and Betty (Dalle) making love in a small, dimly lit room with a painting of the Mona Lisa watching over them. The camera moves in closer as Betty’s moans and screams become more rapid as she reaches one of several orgasms: “I had known Betty for a week. We screwed every single night. The forecast was stormy.” The film succinctly establishes two motifs in this first scene: firstly, that this couple’s explosive sexuality is central to their relationship; and, secondly, Betty is Zorg’s own Mona Lisa, a mysterious, stormy female who walked out of nowhere into his lonely life. His friend tells him she’s a “page out of Playboy” with her provocative manner and sexy clothes. But he sees more than that. To him she is an enigma, a fascinating one, filled with contradictions: a woman who is capable of inspiring him in his writing, a child who throws violent fits (increasingly so as the film progresses), and a force of nature much like that “storm” on the horizon.
Betty moves in with Zorg at his beach cottage, where he is the caretaker for the compound. She works with him there, alternating between painting cottages and having sex. She is not afraid to establish her new ownership over Zorg as she picks him up from work scantily clad enough that his neighbor jokes about her being a centerfold image, and then possessively places her hand on his crotch when he jumps in the vehicle. But everything changes, however, when during a violent tantrum Betty discovers boxes containing Zorg’s novel and stays up all night reading it. Convinced he is a great writer, Betty tries to cajole Zorg to leave his isolated beach community and go to the center of publishing in France, Paris. The slacker Zorg however lacks confidence and prefers to stay in his dead-end job. So Betty gives him the motivation he needs by insulting and then attacking his employer (pushing him over a banister) and gleefully burning down Zorg’s cottage.
Publicity photo of Béatrice Dalle for Betty Blue.
This image of Beatrice Dalle as Betty Blue expresses both the earthy sensuality of the actress as well as that of the character.
Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) finds Betty (Béatrice Dalle) in the streets after one of her nervous breakdowns, from Betty Blue.
Betty takes Zorg to her friend’s hotel in Paris and there she sets about typing up his manuscript, even though she can only type one letter at a time. Their devotion to each other increases and so does Zorg’s confidence as he begins to edit his book. Their sexual passion for each other grows as well, as exemplified by the numerous scenes of lovemaking, as if the creativity of working together feeds off the drug of their passion. The predicted “storm on the horizon” however begins to make its appearance as Betty becomes restless, aggravated by the lack of positive response to Zorg’s novel. Her violent outbursts become worse: she attacks a woman at a friend’s restaurant; she wounds a publisher who wrote a particularly nasty review of Zorg’s submission (“I return this nauseating flower you call a novel”), which causes her to be thrown in jail. It is at this point that Zorg’s devotion to Betty truly surfaces as he uncharacteristically shows up at her accuser’s house and physically forces him to call the police and drop charges, calmly explaining to the frightened publisher that he has nothing to lose and that she is the only thing that is important to him in his life.
When they move to a small town to take care of the piano business their friend Eddy has inherited, Betty feels even more trapped. Zorg muses: “Betty was a wild horse that had cut her hamstrings jumping over a fence and couldn’t get up.” They begin to fight more often; at one point, she even pushes her hand through a window and runs out into the night with Zorg in pursuit. Betty regains her composure and balance when she finds she is pregnant. Her need for movement and progress is fulfilled by the plans for a new life. However, when Betty finds that the preliminary pregnancy test was wrong, her depression and psychotic episodes increase. One night Zorg comes home to find her sitting at the dinner table, shockingly disheveled. She has butchered her hair and her face is covered in frantically applied makeup, much like a clown. The look on her face is pure emotional agony, mixed with a sort of fear. He cries and in empathy spreads pasta sauce all over his own face and kisses her.
The more schizophrenic Betty becomes, the more desperate the measures Zorg adopts. Dressed as a woman, he robs a payroll office to buy Betty a “paradise” to which they can escape. Betty is not placated and instead steals a child. Zorg rescues her from her folly in a department store where she has taken the child, but he cannot save this complex child-woman from herself. The downward spiral continues and Zorg comes home to find blood all over the house. In the depths of despair, Betty has poked out her own eye during another psychotic episode and retreated into a catatonic state. Though he visits her at the hospital faithfully, the bereft lover is unable to save Betty from herself. He is eventually banned from the hospital.
Publicity photo with two dangerous ladies as dommes: left, Béatrice Dalle with riding crop in hand; and right, Asia Argento with flogger.
Zorg again dresses up like a woman, using the disguise to get past the hospital staff, and also as a way of demonstrating his gender identification with his beloved. Weeping, he puts Betty out of her misery, suffocating her.
Marco Bellocchio’s Vision of the Sabbath (1988) casts Dalle as Maddalena, a young woman who claims to be the reincarnation of a seventeenth-century witch. She has been institutionalized after attacking a man who masturbated in front of her. The police hire a psychiatrist, Davide (Daniel Ezralow), to unravel the puzzle that is Maddalena. Instead, Davide finds himself falling under her influence. He has visions of her during the day and night, even before he meets the prisoner. In these visions, Maddalena first appears dressed in a peasant dress and staring out in the distance and then suddenly and magically a conflagration is ignited behind her. She is then seen being examined by the Inquisition for witchcraft. Her only defender is the doctor who she embraces and kisses sensuously. Davide is the doctor.
The scenes of Maddalena’s persecution and torture by the Inquisition (she is suspended by a rope and beaten; she is dunked repeatedly in the lake, et cetera) parallel the modern inquisition Maddalena undergoes surrounded by modern inquisitors: doctors, officers, and the like. In both she defies the men—like Joan of Arc during her own trial—with her intelligent and accusatory answers, reinforcing one of the themes of the movie: that throughout history males have used official entities like the Church and now the psychiatric profession to keep “hysterical” (read: uncontrollable) women in check. In one scene, Maddalena echoes Davide’s dream by embracing and shamelessly kissing him in front of the other investigators, as much to show her defiance of them as to titillate Davide. The doctor ultimately abandons his stagnant relationship with his wife, even handing over his wedding ring for Maddalena to wear. But Maddalena is not satisfied. She wants more. She wants his total commitment, physically as well as emotionally.
Béatrice Dalle as Annie, the object of the addicted protagonist’s nightmares, from The Blockout.
The climax is their lovemaking on the rocks near the lake. In a long and highly erotic sequence, Maddalena reaches the heights of sexual passion and accepts Davide’s submission to her. In the final scene, another dream sequence (or is it a memory?), Davide watches as the seventeenth-century Maddalena is brought to the stake to be burned. Davide himself grabs the torch and sets fire to the piles of wood. But when the flames die, leaving only smo
ke, Maddalena stands smiling, untouched. Davide smiles back in this affirmation of her power and by extension the power of all femmes fatales.
In Abel Ferrara’s The Blackout (1997), Dalle plays the object of addict/movie star Matty’s (Matthew Modine) erotic fixation. Matty deplanes in Miami to meet Annie and then proceeds to ignore his friends while he makes out passionately with her in a restaurant. The lovemaking continues up in his room. But the meeting ends badly as Annie tells him she had an abortion because she did not want to raise the child of a “junkie.” They become involved in a verbal and physical battle and Annie leaves.
High on liquor and cocaine, Matty attends the video sex club of his friend Mickey (Dennis Hopper). There Mickey is adapting Émile Zola’s novel Nana, the nineteenth-century story of a doomed femme fatale. Annie is playing the part. In order to involve the reluctant Matty in the project, Annie dances sensuously onstage, flirting with both men and women as Mickey videotapes. The Hollywood star, who had disdained acting in this low-budget production, cannot resist the call of Annie and joins in the videotaped sex scenes.
That night Annie disappears and the wasted Matty wanders into a diner where he meets a teenage waitress (Sarah Lassez) who not only resembles Annie but has the same name. He takes her back to Mickey’s club and filming begins again with “Annie 2.”The blackout of the title then takes place and the film moves forward in time. Matty is married and sober, but still haunted by images of strangling Annie 1 (Dalle). He returns to Miami and asks Mickey to find Annie 1 for him so he can put his mind to rest. Mickey brings Annie 1 to his room; but, by that time, he has relapsed and is lying in broken liquor bottles and his own vomit. Looking up at Annie, who is dressed all in black like an angel of death, he pleads with her. But she dismisses him with disgust.
Returning to Mickey’s studio, Matty watches footage of himself and Annie 2. He begins to make love to her on screen and then strangles her to death. Now understanding the truth, he goes to the beach and swims out with the obvious intention of drowning.
In Claire Denis’s exposition on modern culture, female power, and cannibalism—Trouble Every Day (2001)—Dalle plays Core, another imprisoned female. She is the wife of a doctor who is doing experiments on the libido and its relationships to disorders like cannibalism. In order to prevent his wife Core from exercising her own predatory instincts (a metaphor for containing her sexual power), he locks her into his house. But Core manages to escape from time to time and bring back her prey: virile young men. She first has uninhibited sex with them, and then feeds on them in a vicious (but somewhat playful) manner.
Inside (2007) features Dalle as the unnamed female threat of the film. Dressed all in black, again like an angel of death, she first appears in the night outside the house of the widowed and pregnant Sarah (Alysson Paradis) who is about to give birth to her child. She is a truly frightening figure, looming outside the picture window, her face in shadows, only lit briefly when she lights up a cigarette. Then, without warning, she pounds her fist against the glass and it shatters.
Even though Sarah informs the police and they activate a patrol, the Woman penetrates Sarah’s home. All the viewer knows at this point is that the Woman for some reason wants Sarah’s child. She cuts Sarah in the face and then begins a C-section with a household instrument. Sarah escapes to a room with a secured lock. In a rage that seems almost superhuman, the Woman pounds and kicks the door, eventually making holes through the barrier with a pair of scissors.
When a police patrol arrives to check on the pregnant Sarah, the Woman dispatches all of them in a bloody massacre. The bleeding Sarah then ignites the Woman’s face on fire with an aerosol can as the Woman is lighting up a cigarette. But even disfigurement and pain cannot stop this embodiment of pure rage and desire. Only in the last part of the film do we find out the motivation for the Woman’s maniacal actions. She was driving the other car in an accident that took Sarah’s husband. In that same accident the Woman lost her unborn child.
In a totally harrowing climax, the Woman achieves her ends by cutting open Sarah’s stomach and removing the child. She then retreats to another room where she rocks the bloody child in her arms as the camera fades out.
Melinda Clarke
—Dominatrix as Femme Fatale
Like other new millennium femmes fatales (Lucy Liu, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, et cetera), Melinda Clarke has chosen to dominate not only the movies but also television.
Return of the Living Dead III (1993) is the film that brought Melinda Clarke to the attention of cultists. Julie (Melinda Clarke) is a thrill-seeking suburban teen. We first see her on a cliff with her friends. Dressed in combat boots, fishnet tights, shorts, see-through top, and a leather jacket, she places her hand over the flame of her cigarette lighter and smiles. Her more conservative boyfriend Curt (J. Trevor Edmond) arrives on his motorcycle, and they take off on an adventure of Julie’s making. They use the keycard of Curt’s army officer father to break into a military base and investigate a secret project his father is heading.
Inside, the excited Julie watches as the scientists revive zombies with a chemical and then try to destroy them with a “magic bullet.” Back in bed with Curt at his house, Julie fantasizes about the frightening experiment she saw while making love to her boyfriend. Curt’s father (Kent McCord) returns and tells his son they are going to move again. But Curt refuses to leave Julie.
Melinda Clarke vamping it up with her piercing steely eyes.
Punk zombie Julie (Melinda Clarke) in Return of the Living Dead III.
Melinda Clarke as the sexually aggressive new millennium woman Savannah from Return toTwo Moon Junction.
The couple take his motorcycle and speed through the night. Always looking for cheap thrills, Julie fondles Curt’s genitals (“You’re all mine ....”), causing him to swerve and crash. Julie is killed in the accident. The distraught Curt, unable to accept her death, transports her back to the army facility and revives her through an application of the gas that he had seen revive the zombies earlier in the story.
The revivified Julie however, like most zombies, has a hunger for flesh and brains. During an aborted robbery in a liquor store (where Julie is devouring junk food in order to alleviate her hunger), Julie attacks one of the hoods and then later devours the brains of the storeowner when they escape in a van from the police. Even though the disgusted Julie tries to kill herself by jumping off a bridge into the Los Angeles River, Curt cannot “let her go” and finds her once again with the help of a homeless man (Basil Wallace).
As they hide out in the sewer system with the homeless man, Julie discovers that she can lessen the agony of her hunger through inflicting pain on her own body. So she inserts various pieces of metal and glass into her body and cuts her skin until she looks more like a 1980s punk than a zombie. With her pain lessened, she makes love to Curt, who seems to know no limits to his desire for her.
When they are attacked again by the gang of hoods from the liquor store, Julie entraps their leader who thinks she is “kinky,” and then rips off his head. Captured by Curt’s father, Julie is caged and prepped for more experiments. But Curt cannot stand to see his love in this situation, so once again he frees her. But this time, after he is bitten by one of the zombies, he tells Julie that there is a way out. As she tells him that she knew he would never leave her, he opens the door on the furnace and they burn together, locked in an amour fou embrace.
In Return to Two Moon Function (1995) Clarke plays Savannah Delongpre, a model in New York who leaves her cheating manager /boyfriend and returns to her roots in Georgia. In the first scene after seeing her boyfriend flirting with another model, she storms out onto the catwalk dressed all in black, kicks a large vase into the audience, and rips off her choker—all acts which help classify her as a femme fatale.
Back in Georgia, visiting her grandmother, Savannah spies a muscular artist working on a sculpture in the family-owned lake cottage called “Two Moon Junction.” In the graphic erotic and romantic scenes that
follow between Savannah and the “boy from the wrong side of the tracks” Jake (John Clayton Schafer), the film reverses the traditional roles of male and female in classic Hollywood movies. Savannah is the aggressor and the voyeur in the film while Jake is the object of her desire. She defies her upper-class grandmother (Louis Fletcher) and the mores of the old South in order to indulge all of her sexual fantasies. Even in the final scene Savannah gets her way, as she returns to her modeling life, which Jake wanted her to give up, and at the last moment her lover joins her on the train to Atlanta.
The Killer Tongue (1996) is a darkly comic crime film/horror film in the tradition of From Dusk Till Dawn. Clarke as Candy, the female half of a fugitive couple, enters the scene in a convertible driven by her lover Johnny (Jason Durr). Screaming with excitement and wielding a gun, her blonde hair blown by the wind, Candy and Johnny dump their partners-in-crime. She orders them out by pointing her gun at their crotches and then glues their lips together before abandoning them.
Johnny, however, is apprehended while Candy hides out in a convent with her pet dogs. Hearing Johnny will be released soon, she waits for him in a shack near the prison camp. However, a meteor hits the area, and Candy’s pets are turned into human servants while she transforms into a vinyl-skinned half-human creature with an extraordinarily long tongue—which, as an added benefit, speaks to her. At first Candy finds it difficult to adjust to this new appendage, even though it does help her eliminate one of the partners she abandoned by reaming him as she kisses him and then absorbing his organs for food.
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