Fitting for a movie that's one full stop removed from the real world, Brian De Palma's brilliant thriller Femme Fatale twists every conceivable slander against it into a sterling asset: It's a showy, derivative, coolly academic piece of trash, disengaged with anything outside itself and its own influences. Much like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, which it resembles in more ways than one, Femme Fatale makes a rich bouillabaisse out of De Palma's trademark themes and obsessions, stacking references to the heavens and operating with an internal logic that may take several viewings to fully unpack. Fortunately, every viewing will be a pleasure, at least for ardent De Palma fans. A return to form after an unsteady run in the studio system, which ended in the recent debacle Mission To Mars, Femme Fatale was financed and shot outside of Hollywood's pressures and expectations, allowing the director's devilish wit more freedom to roam. As the title suggests, the film delights in playing around with genre types, beginning with icy anti-heroine Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, who literally takes her cues from Barbara Stanwyck in the 1944 noir classic Double Indemnity. From there, De Palma moves into an elaborate setpiece at the Cannes Film Festival, as Romijn-Stamos uses her sexual prowess to separate a supermodel from her serpent-shaped designer top, which is studded with $10 million worth of diamonds. True to her sinister nature, Romijn-Stamos double-crosses a dangerous team of conspirators led by Eriq Ebouaney, who winds up serving a seven-year prison sentence for the crime. Needing to keep a low profile, Romijn-Stamos becomes the mysterious wife of wealthy American entrepreneur Peter Coyote, who drags her back to Paris when he buys his way into an ambassadorship. But just as Ebouaney is released from prison, Romijn-Stamos' cover is blown by tabloid photographer Antonio Banderas, who sells off an exclusive snapshot that winds up plastered all over the city. Never one to keep things too simple, De Palma tacks on a phony kidnapping scheme, introduces a Vertigo-like doppelgänger, and closes with a third act that ties the whole story into knots. Though rife with humor, suspense, and sleazy eroticism, Femme Fatale exists entirely within the De Palma universe, a place where the movies have scored a rousing triumph over the grotty business of everyday life. Cued to Ryuichi Sakamoto's winking score—a wholesale knock-off of Ravel's "Bolero"—the film finds the master of mimicry stepping into a hall of mirrors, imitating himself imitating Hitchcock. After turning out decades of sensational trash (Carrie, The Fury, Dressed To Kill, Sisters, Body Double, Obsession, Blow Out, and Raising Cain, for starters), De Palma has condensed his great career into one package, as a reward to the faithful.