Few of Brian DePalma's films really qualify as thrillers, because that term suggests sustained narrative tension and he has demonstrated only a passing interest in the kind of effort that's required to keep the plot threads taut. Instead, he builds visually and rhythmically on ideas and suggestions, out of the hint of an intriguing narrative hook or the conventions of a genre, to combine sound and vision in the creation of a perfect cinematic moment. The set pieces are the thing. Standout performances in a De Palma film (such as the unforgettable Al Pacino assault in Scarface) are the exception. What becomes important is style and texture, with DePalma's flourishes taking on meaning only to the degree that his viewers are willing to indulge them.

If it sounds like I'm being an apologist, it's only because I figure cinephiles are the only audience with the patience for a DePalma film. It's not that Femme Fatale is a difficult movie - it's just that it plays on the surface like the worst sort of late-night dross, with gratuitous skin, frankly incredible plot contrivances, and second-rate actors putting in third-rate performances. The admittedly awesome Rebecca Romijn-Stamos bump-and-grind will only get him so far with the Cinemax crowd, and the hoary old trick he pulls in a bid for final-reel meaning is guaranteed to piss off more people than it gratifies. Really grooving on Femme Fatale takes an appreciation, not just of his stylish fillips, but also of the way he plays with genre and auteurist expectations.

For example, Femme Fatale is most specifically not film noir. Actually, it's anti-noir. The femme fatale, of course, is literally the woman who will kill you. Film noir protagonists who crossed her path could pretty much kiss their asses goodbye, because no film worth the noir descriptor ever ended happily. In Femme Fatale, De Palma casts sex bomb Romign-Stamos as the archetypal femme fatale. In the film's knockout opening sequence, set - with winks rather than pretentiousness - against the glittering backdrop of the Cannes Film Festival during a screening of Regis Wargnier's Ost-West, she retires to the ladies room with an already nearly topless Rie Rasmussen, whom she starts snogging in a bid to divest her of the diamond-crusted serpenty thing that's draped over her shoulders and chest as Ryuichi Sakamoto's Bolero-derived score plays on the soundtrack. Sex, crime, voyeurism, beautiful women, rampant cinephilia - it's a lovely, unapologetic rendering of all the stuff that makes De Palma films tick, and it's great stylish fun to boot.

From there, the film settles a bit disappointingly into stolen-identity thriller territory, though livened up with split-screen sequences and lingering on trademark De Palma subjects (voyeurism, photography, violence). Banderas is uneven, but Romijn-Stamos remains fun to watch throughout, at her best when oozing confidence long enough to explain exactly how she goes about fucking you - in both literal and figurative senses of the word.

It's hard to explain what happens next without getting into spoiler territory, but here's the thing about Femme Fatale: DePalma has never been so kind to his characters. Here, he crafts an entire movie around a seductive and deadly femme fatale - and then lets her see the error of her ways. The result is a curiously happy ending that seems as utterly perverse, in its own way, as the cruel joke that topped Blow Out, another one of his best films. For what may be the first time ever, De Palma pitches the idea of a kind of moral redemption as saver of lives and souls. Sure, people still get killed in the reality that he depicts - but if the friends you choose can survive your greed and mischief-making, well, maybe that's redeeming enough.