Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) reunites Li Gong and Yimou Zhang in a breathtakingly gorgeous operatic tale of incest, murder, and revenge. Li Gong plays Empress Phoenix who is plotting to overthrow her brutal husband, Emperor Ping (Yun-Fat Chow). In the first sequence Phoenix and her large retinue of ladies are dressing, as if for battle (we later learn that this is true, figuratively at least), donning their golden gowns and jewelry. This sequence is intercut with the troops of her husband, in their dark uniforms, rushing home, again as if to confront Phoenix and her troops. Immediately, and economically, the conflict is established.
Phoenix is an imperious figure, leading her women through the long halls of the palace like the empress she is. She radiates strength coupled with rage that cannot be hidden. Her only defect seems to be a tremor she cannot hide, as her hands shake when she embroiders chrysanthemums on lace and her body falters when she walks. As we later find out, the cause is that she is being gradually poisoned by her husband, a fact of which she is aware. The scenes where she forces herself to imbibe the tea formula he devised for her are harrowing. But she cannot refuse the emperor whose orders are law. And so she devises a rebellion under his own nose.
Phoenix enlists the aid of two of her three sons in this endeavor, believing the youngest one is too naive and untrained to participate.
Detective Crockett cannot resist the cool beauty of the criminal Isabella (Li Gong), from Miami Vice.
The first son, Wan (Ye Liu), is actually her stepson as well as her lover. When he hesitates, she becomes angry with him, seeing this as a way of distancing himself from her. When she later discovers he is having affair with the imperial doctor’s daughter Chan (Man Li), she bursts in upon their lovemaking and threatens to torture and exile Chan. She relents after her son begs for mercy.
Phoenix then turns to her most devoted son, Jai (Jay Chou), who is the also an officer in his father’s army. Jai also hesitates until she reveals that his father is poisoning her. The grief-stricken son pledges his loyalty. The rebellion does not go well, as the emperor has discovered the plot from his son Wan, who stabs himself in despair after his mother puts an end to his affair with Chan.
In a battle scene resembling the canvas of a painting, the army of the emperor, again in dark colors, collides with the army of the empress led by her son, clad in Phoenix’s color: gold. Phoenix’s army is totally destroyed and Jai captured alive. In a final act of sadism, the emperor offers to forgive his son if he will serve his mother the poisonous tea each hour. In response, Jai kills himself; and Phoenix, in a final act of defiance, throws the cup of tea in the air, where it floats in slow motion as a tangible symbol of her rebellion.
Lucy Liu
—Anna May Wong Lives
Lucy Liu is only the second Asian-American actress to achieve stardom; and, like her predecessor Anna May Wong, she has done it largely through femme fatale roles which play upon the Dragon Lady stereotype. But unlike her artistic grandmother Wong, Liu, a true third-wave feminist, embraces these roles with enthusiasm. As Liu has said in several interviews, she delights in the female power and complexity these femme fatale roles offer.
After working in television and playing small roles in movies, Lucy Liu was given her break in 1998 with David E. Kelly’s award-winning satirical show about lawyers: the TV series Ally McBeal. As the “super bitch,” high-powered lawyer Ling Woo, Liu played the most daring and extravagant character in this gallery of grotesques. She intimidated not only her cohorts but her clients as well. And she was not above expressing her sexual desire in whatever way she pleased—whether the object was male or female. Ally McBeal did more to raise Liu’s visibility and fix her image, for both good and bad, in the public’s mind than any other show or movie she has been involved in since.
At the same time, Liu played a dominatrix in Mel Gibson’s Payback (1999). She is remembered fondly by fans for the scene in which Gibson as the vengeful Porter comes in to harass a potential informant: Val (Gregg Henry). Val is in the middle of a session with his domme Pearl (Liu), dressed in boots, vinyl chaps, and bra. When Porter makes a move to attack the recalcitrant Val, Pearl tells him, “Please allow me.” Val starts to resist until Porter, holding a gun, tells him to let her work. Pearl proceeds to beat and kick her client senseless, stomping his genitals while saying sarcastically and in a parody of the movie Full Metal Jacket, “Me love you long time.”
In 2000 and 2003, Liu united with Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz in the ultimate girl-power films of the new millennium —Charlie’s Angels and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, a revamping of the quasi-feministTV series of the 1970s. The three female stars are multiethnic, postmodern feminists who perfectly encapsulate the third-wave feminist’s aversion to the perceived sexual puritanism of the 1970s women’s movement. Liu as Alex Munday, like her sisters in arms, revels in her sensual nature and at times uses sex as a powerful tool against a universe still dominated by men, including their fatherly “boss”—the reclusive Charlie.
A femme fatale publicity pose by Lucy Liu.
The sisterhood is powerful—Charlie’s angels (Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, and Drew Barrymore) from Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.
Alex and the other “angels” express an aggressive and cavalier attitude toward men. Alex’s two major dance sequences in both films exemplify this. In the first film, she plays a dominatrix/efficiency expert who uses her cane and power of intimidation to extract information from a class of brainy nerds while “Barracuda” plays on the soundtrack. In the second film, she and her sisters-in-intrigue put on a Pussycat Dolls-style performance in which Alex wields a whip as her sisters fleece the object of their charade.
In the final analysis, Alex’s ultimate commitment is to her sisters, rather than any boyfriend or father, real or imagined. Alex initially lies to both her lover and her father to protect the sisterhood. In fact, her on-and-off relationship with empty-headed Jason (Matt LeBlanc) and her tendency to physically manhandle him, albeit “accidentally,” is played out for humor rather than for any possible romantic implications.
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002) features Liu as a bitter, superhuman assassin named Sever who is bent on exacting revenge on a leader of a shadow government in the United States. The cynical and ruthless Gent (Gregg Henry) is responsible for the death of Sever’s family, as well as attempting to kill CIA agent Ecks (Antonio Banderas) and his child. In this action-packed film, Liu once again, as in the Charlie’s Angels films, demonstrates the impressive martial-arts skills that she has finely honed over the last decade.
Alex (Lucy Liu), whip in hand, leads the Pussycat Dolls in a number from Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.
In lingerie, socialite Kitty Baxter (Lucy Liu) is arrested for murder and refuses to go gently, from Chicago.
Ling Woo (Lucy Liu) makes her move on coworker Elaine (Jane Krakowski), from the TV series Ally McBeal.
That same year Liu also played a small role as the heiress Kitty, who slays her faithless lover in the megahit musical Chicago (2002). Dragged into the jail cell through a barrage of reporters and police, she answers their questions pointedly and then kicks a particularly annoying one in the genitals.
Director Quentin Tarantino handpicked Lucy Liu for the role of yakuza boss O-Ren Ishii in his feminist martial-arts film Kill Bill (2003). O-Ren’s story is told partially in animated form. O-Ren is a survivor. Half-Chinese and half-Caucasian, she witnesses, as a small child, the murder of her mother and father by a yakuza boss. At the tender age of eleven, she seduces and then murders the man she believes had been responsible for the murder of her parents. Under Bill’s (David Carradine) tutelage, she becomes one of the highest paid assassins in his Viper Squad, and later the “Queen of the Tokyo underworld.”
In one bloody scene, O-Ren reestablishes her authority over a table of male crime bosses by decapitating one of them for daring to mock her mixed heritage. She also directs her troops as they defend the teahouse against the assault by The Bride (Uma Thurman). Form
er comrades in the Viper Squad, O-Ren faces The Bride one-on-one in a poetic battle in the snow. She is defeated.
Rise is a vampire film in which Liu begins the story as a reporter for a small local newspaper—unadventurous, even a little timid. Like most vampire films, the transformation from human to vampire releases not only preternatural powers but also increases the sexuality of the individual. Sadie (Liu) goes through such a transformation when she is kidnapped by a cult of vampires she is investigating. She is raped by their sexy and ruthless male and female leaders—Bishop (James D’Arcy) and Eve (Carla Gugino)—and then left for dead.
However, Sadie’s will to live allows her to be reborn as a vampire. Like most vampires in this post-Anne Rice (The Vampire Chronicles) era, Sadie is disgusted by her need for human blood and seeks out death.
O-Ren (Lucy Liu), flanked on the right by her faithful hitgirl Gogo (Chiaki Kuriyama), surveys her criminal empire, from Kill Bill.
After she jumps from a bridge onto a freeway, she finds that dying is not so easy for a vampire. She is tended to by a shaman (Julio Mechoso), who tells her she must embrace her “shadow side” in order to defeat the vampires and take her revenge. He trains her in weapons and martial arts and lets her loose on the city at night.
Sadie, dressed in black and armed, becomes a predator, sexually attractive and lethal in the extreme. She seductively lures a prostitute away from a customer at a bar and leads her to a mansion. There she commands her to undress as she watches, her legs spread like a man. When the woman (Cameron Richardson) finishes, she ties her up and suspends her head down from a shower. Presenting her to one of the elder vampires who has some information she needs, she dispatches the vampire immediately after he utters the address of her next victim.
There are two other key scenes in which Sadie employs her newfound sexual power. When her hunger for blood grows too great, she hitches a ride with a “stoner,” has sex with him, and then drains him in the front seat of his car. Later, she is arrested by a rogue cop, Rawlins (Michael Chiklis), who is searching for the vampire killers of his daughter. Hoping to enlist him in her quest, she urinates in front of him (he has handcuffed her) and then asks him to zip up her jeans. Soon they are partners in her final assault on Bishop and his minions.
O-Ren (Lucy Liu) faces her former sister in crime,The Bride (Uma Thurman), from Kill Bill.
Watching the Detectives (2007) gives Liu a chance to return to her comic roots. As the free-spirited femme fatale Violet, she drives the movie buff Neil (Cillian Murphy) to distraction with her pranks and erratic behavior. She first enters into Neil’s life and video store as he is watching a movie vamp on television. Dressed in bohemian clothes, she ignores him as he tries to recommend a film. When he later neglects to respond promptly to her request, she pounds him on the head with his own video boxes. Having no ID, he rents her a video for a deposit, which she later steals back and then manipulates him into buying her a dinner of equal worth.
Violet is a psychological terrorist, intent on disrupting Neil’s safe and boring world of “watching”—people, movies, the world in general. Keeping him off balance, she initially refuses to tell him where she lives or to allow him any sexual favors. Instead, she coerces him into breaking and entering into a large video store that is driving him out of business and then vandalizing it. She later tells him she has a stalker ex-boyfriend, and then hires a neighbor to act as the jealous ex-lover and tie Violet up when Neil comes to her house.
With hoodie in place, Sever (Lucy Liu) surveys the carnage she has wrought, from Ballistic.
After a sexual encounter with a marijuana-smoking “dude,” Sadie (Lucy Liu) takes his blood, from Rise.
Sadie (Lucy Liu), both vampire and vampire hunter with her handy crossbow, from Rise.
After Violet finally allows him to have sex with her, Neil is totally hooked on this exciting woman. However, although she is becoming attached to him, she continues to torment him. She tells him he is “like a baby,” always falling for the joke no matter how many times she executes it. But more importantly, she wants him to learn to live outside a box, video or otherwise. Although Neil tries to leave her, he can no longer stand his film-obsessed buddies or their inane conversations about movie trivia. He returns to Violet, who has just bought a new muscle car with money they stole from her job. Together they head off into an exciting and undoubtedly stressful future.
Asia Argento
—The Scarlet Diva
When cult actress Asia Argento directed and wrote her autobiographical film Scarlet Diva in 2000, she put on the screen with total honesty her own personal journey as the ultimate bad girl/femme fatale. Daughter of horror director Dario Argento, Asia naturally enough began her career in the genre of horror. But soon she stretched her wings (which is one of her larger tattoos) and redefined the role of the femme fatale for herself.
In many of her interviews Argento credits maverick director Abel Ferrara with giving her the confidence and encouragement to develop her persona and finally to direct her own movies. Argento first worked with Ferrara on his 1998 film New Rose Hotel. Not only was Argento able to hold her own against such powerful actors as Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe but Ferrara, in an attempt to support her creative growth, allowed her to direct several scenes in the movie.
Based on a story by cyberpunk writer William Gibson, Argento plays Sandii, a femme fatale with ambiguous motives and mysterious roots. Fox (Christopher Walken), an eccentric industrialist/hustler, hires Sandii after watching her sing in a nightclub where she is caressed and fondled by several young women as she croons in a raspy voice a torch song (immediately typing her as a femme fatale of the Dietrich variety). Fox, in collusion with his buddy X (Willem Dafoe), pays her to seduce the scientist Hiroshi away from his wife and the Maas Corporation and into his service.
X, who directs the operation, falls in love with Sandii. Trying to fathom this complicated, secretive woman, he falls deeper into an intense sexual relationship with her, pieces of which are seen throughout the movie repeated from various angles, reinforcing the notion that X—and through him the viewer—are now obsessed with unraveling the mystery of Sandii.
Of course, director Ferrara, famous for his love of ambiguity, never allows that. By the end of the movie, the viewer realizes that Sandii in fact controls the narrative by not allowing either the audience or the men in the film to penetrate her emotionally and intellectually. She betrays X and Fox by siding with Maas Corporation. Fox kills himself, and X retreats to a coffin-like cubicle in the New Rose Hotel, where he reruns in his head images of Sandii, still trying to possess her by understanding her. The final images of her ambiguous smile after X suggests they give up the mission (in flashback) say it all—and yet say nothing at all.
In B. Monkey (1998), Argento plays a femme fatale seeking redemption and a little peace. Beatrice, a.k.a. B. Monkey, is a thief in London who grows tired of her wild lifestyle and leaves her partners for a mild-mannered but supportive schoolteacher, Alan (Jared Harris). Alan finds in Beatrice the excitement he has been missing in his sedate life. But with it comes a price.
Glamour photo of Asia Argento.
Beatrice is fiery, sometimes cruel, and she even costs him his job. In addition, her ex-partner shows up and proposes one final heist. But Alan cannot separate himself from this unique femme and so is willing to pay the price.
In the Vin Diesel vehicle xXx (2002), Argento revisits her role as a secret agent. Here she has become the lover of a Slavic gangster who is threatening the United States with “weapons of mass destruction.” When extreme-sports champion Xander Cage (Diesel) shows up at the compound, in the pay of the CIA, she changes sides. One begins to suspect more for the “extreme” sex than because of any moral compunction.
Argento took the directing helm again in 2004 when she adapted the controversial J.T. LeRoy short story “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.” Unrelenting in her self-confessed quest for brutal honesty in her performances, Argento plays the �
�mother from hell” in this tale of child abuse. The young boy’s devotion to his drug-addicted, schizophrenic mother is heartbreaking to watch; and there is no happy ending to reassure audiences that this is the best of all possible worlds. Argento also cast fellow Italian femme fatale Ornella Muti as the boy’s grandmother.
In 2006 Argento portrayed the historical bad girl Madame Du Barry, the powerful mistress of Louis XV, in Sofia Coppola’s lush and fanciful biography of Marie Antoinette. In the film Du Barry tries to subvert Marie in fear that she will lose some of her power now that the king’s son has acquired such a young and beautiful wife.
Olivier Assayas’s erotic thriller centering on international intrigue, Boarding Gate, allowed Argento the opportunity to again explore the depths of a woman driven by sex and greed to live a life filled with duplicity. Sandra (Argento) visits her ex-lover, industrialist Miles Rennberg (Michael Madsen), in order to make him suffer for the perceived wrongs of the past. Teasing him repeatedly, they recall moments of their past together, including a weekend of sadomasochistic role play. “Say the word ‘slave’ again,” she says, lifting her skirt and rubbing her hand between her legs. Sandra had worked for him as a call girl, entertaining rich businessman and then returning to tell him about the sexual details before they made love. After she is drugged by a group of Japanese businessman and Miles refuses to take action, they drift apart.
Femme Fatale: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies Page 18