'FEMME FATALE' KEEPS TWISTING.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

WHAT IS IT about Paris that brings out so much visual artistry in nearly great American filmmakers while making their storytelling instincts implode like a fallen souffle?

In both departments, Brian De Palma pulls off ``Femme Fatale'' noticeably better than Jonathan Demme did last month's ``The Truth About Charlie.'' This is one of De Palma's most brilliant exercises in seeing, peeping, misdirection and deception - and as steeped as anything he's done in the psycho-pleasure possibilities of recording technologies, our collective cinematic culture (lots of his two favorites, Hitchcock and Eisenstein, referenced again) and his own body of work (``Dressed to Kill,'' ``Obsession,'' ``Body Double,'' ``Mission: Impossible,'' ``Raising Cain'' and ``Blow Out'' are the principal influences here).

But De Palma has also whipped up a suspense puzzle script for this piece that defines the expression ``too clever by half.'' Make no mistake: This thing is a lot of disreputable fun, even after a third-act fakeout so brazen it makes you want to slap the filmmaker. But even though the big trick only makes one think of how much better such business was handled by David Lynch in ``Mulholland Drive'' or M. Night Shyamalan in all of his movies, it remains difficult to deny that ``Femme Fatale'' is exquisite, entertaining trash.

Beginning with a half-nude Rebecca Romijn-Stamos reflected in a French television screen on which a subtitled broadcast of the noir classic ``Double Indemnity'' is playing, the movie commences with a tour-de-force heist at, of all venues, the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. High-tech chicanery, lesbian lovemaking, double- and triple-crossings and a good amount of blood all lead to Romijn-Stamos' title American bad girl, Laure Ash, making off with the jewel-encrusted, snake-shaped thingamajig a sultry model (sultry Danish model Rie Rasmussen) wears to a big premiere.

Laure's escape involves a whirlwind retreat to Paris, where her efforts to obtain a new passport are hindered by a mysteriously parental older couple, one of the violent Cannes partners she's burned and, it will turn out most crucially, a Spanish paparazzo, Nicolas (Antonio Banderas), who has a knack for snapping her in compromising positions. There's also a bizarre scene involving an overdecorated little girl's home, a grieving widow who looks a lot like Laure and a good deal of water imagery.

Seven years later (that would be 2008, and I'm not making this up), a transformed Laure, now pretending to be a French national named Lily, is back in Paris as, get this, the mysterious wife of the new U.S. ambassador (Peter Coyote). Nicolas, who has given up the celeb-stalking game for an impoverished life as a photo-collage artist, is offered an assignment he can't refuse. He gets a few shots of the understandably camera-shy Lily/Laure, but she is soon playing on his sympathies and libido to help her out of what looks like a bad jam.

He, and we, have no idea how bad. For him.

The twisty, demented scheming that goes on from there is ludicrous but also ingenious, as is De Palma's Herculean effort to tell as much of his crazy story as he can through images as opposed to dialogue and exposition. Which is just as well; although the game ex-model Romijn-Stamos gets a sense of evil glee across in most of her crasser line readings and (not that I'd know) sounds passable when speaking French or in a Gallic accent, she is primarily here to be ogled.

Which De Palma does with his usual, cool-yet-drooling fascination. A few welcome variations here, however, on the director's voyeuristic practices. Although we see the film's star in many stages of undress, actual nudity on her part is minimal (that's left for the younger Rasmussen, who can't even get that snaky thing to do its job properly while she's wearing it). Guys won't be disappointed, though; Romijn-Stamos does a strip/lap dance that almost melts the screen. But it's instructive that that old, dubious rationalization - that the character is in control of her sexuality, hence the actress is not being exploited by the camera - has never appeared more true than in this circumstance.

Additionally, guess what? In the long, sordid history of sadistically mistreated De Palma heroines, Laure comes out not only relatively unscathed, not just much more the victimizer than the victim, but in an odd way, redeemed. It takes a lot of incredibly tortuous and unconvincing plot mutilations to get there, but for a film so informed by the male gaze and hysterical fantasies of the femme fatale stereotype, that might be the most startling innovation yet in De Palma's indulgent, alarming and sporadically brilliant career.

FEMME FATALE - Three stars

(R: violence, nudity, sex, language)

Starring: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Rie Rasmussen, Eriq Ebouaney.

Director: Brian De Palma.

Running time: 1 hr. 54 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Visually exquisite De Palma sleazefest of crime, sex, voyeurism and deception. Great dirty fun in places, but the director tries to trick viewers one time too many for us to respect him by the closing credits.

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Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is the femme of ``Femme Fatale'' who manages to steal an expensive bauble and later become the wife of a U.S. ambassador.