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That's why the lady is a Vamp

New book explores the dangerous allure of on-screen femmes fatales

By: Randall King

Posted: 12/15/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

LOS ANGELES — It is safe to say that when writer Dominique Mainon saw Sharon Stone’s brazenly seductive character in director Paul Verhoeven’s sex-and-violence potboiler Basic Instinct, something clicked.

Mainon, 39, is the co-author, with James Ursini, of the new book Femmes Fatales: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies, a lavishly illustrated examination of cinema's love affair with women who are as deadly as they are seductive.

"That was the resurrection of the femme fatale," Mainon says of Stone's character, who became an erotic icon of the SSRq90s despite her unpleasant penchant for killing lovers with an ice pick.

"In the '80s films, (women were often) screaming victims and it was interesting to see the changeover begin to happen," Mainon says. "Next thing you know, there were over-the-top kick-ass women manifesting themselves in a very violent physical manner that was almost like Revenge of the Ladies."

Mainon and Ursini covered some of that thematic turf in a previous book, The Modern Amazons: Warrior Women On Screen, a project she initiated while battling breast cancer in 2004, inspired by the Amazon archetype of women "who cut off their right breast in order to better aim their arrows."

Mainon jumped from a study of warriors to femmes fatales out of a fascination with the femme's powers of manipulation.

"The femme fatale doesn't even need a weapon. She makes the man into a weapon," she says. "I was fascinated with the dynamic of how that came to be. What exactly is it that takes place and what's the commonality between them? What they do to develop these weapons and to gain control?"

Mainon seeks to answer those questions in the book with a thorough overview of an archetype that is almost as old as cinema itself (or much older, if you accept Mainon's introductory assertion that Eve was the first femme fatale, "as she entices Adam to sin and Adam becomes the first man to begin making excuses to God that SHE made him do it.")

The authors' choices are occasionally unconventional. Some favourite femmes fatales such as Kathleen Turner (Body Heat) and Linda Fiorentino (The Last Seduction) are not covered, while lesser-known actresses such as Melinda Clarke and Traci Lords make the cut. "Originally, we felt each actress had to have three strong movies each. That was our basic criteria," Mainon explains.

But the book does offer a considerable sweep of shady ladies from around the globe, including Isabel Sarli, the queen of the Argentine sex melodrama, or Barbara Steele, the English-born star of Italian horror cinema. The book reaches back to Theda Bara, the silent movie actress who titillated our great-grandparents with a vamp character who gleefully drove men to their doom.

French actress Brigitte Bardot also makes the grade, despite the fact her characters never intend harm to her men.

"I think she's an accidental femme fatale," Mainon says. "In her movie And God Created Woman, I think she's an innocent. She has a raging sexuality and the men in the town are just like dogs sniffing after her. She just can't help herself and anyone who falls for her is, in a way, going to his own ruin."

But for Mainon, the ultimate femme fatale is Marlene Dietrich, especially in her role as the cabaret singer Lola Lola in the 1930 film The Blue Angel, in which she turns respected professor Emil Jannings, literally, into a clown.

"Marlene to me is quintessential," Mainon says. "When I think of femme fatale, that is immediately what comes to mind."

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 15, 2009 D1

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