Bellucci appeared briefly in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) as one of the Brides who rose, like succubi, from the bed below the naive Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) and molested him sexually in a prelude to drinking his blood. But Bellucci’s breakthrough role in terms of international recognition was Malena, the story of a young boy, Renato (Giuseppe Sulfaro), in World War II Sicily who becomes obsessed with a sad widow named Malena. Malena (Bellucci) is the erotic core of the young boy’s fantasies. Although Renato never really has any true interaction with her until the end when he is responsible for reuniting her with her husband (he actually survived the war), her image occupies both his waking (he compulsively follows her day and night, spying on her during her most intimate moments, imagining her speaking to him) and sleeping hours (she stars in his erotic fantasies).
Malena (Monica Bellucci) walks defiantly through her small town, from Malena.
Persephone (Monica Bellucci), fierce yet glacial, from The Matrix Reloaded.
Monica Bellucci as international model in one of her many sexy photo shoots.
Malena herself is a strange combination of melancholy and defiance. On one hand she is demure, walking through the town as the men leer at her and the women gossip about her, rarely speaking, eyes most often downcast. But at the same time she shows her independence and rebellious nature by wearing high heels, black stockings, and tight dresses which hug her voluptuous curves and reveal her garters, driving Renato and the rest of men mad with sexual desire. Even when she turns to prostitution to survive during the war, she maintains a cool distance and an enigmatic expression that does not allow men to penetrate her emotions even though they might penetrate her body.
For Renato she is a goddess. He daydreams repeatedly of sexual encounters where he kneels at her feet and touches her stockings and garters; where he lies under her wet hair and drinks the dripping water; or where she is a giantess (Cleopatra actually) who captures him in her slender hand. And although Malena does act as the tool for Renato’s sexual awakening, as well as a sexualized mother figure who inspires him to understand the hypocrisy and cruelty of his provincial society, she is in addition a self-actualized character in her own right. Defiant and distant even in defeat, aware of her sexual power even when it leads to her own downfall near the end when she is beaten and shorn by the town for her sexual relationship with several German soldiers.
This image of Bellucci as untouchable goddess carries over to the American film Under Suspicion (2000). Bellucci as Chantal Hearst, the young wife of a rich pedophile Henry Hearst (Gene Hackman), is again the object of the male gaze. Her husband, who has been banished from her bed after she discovers him flirting with her teenage niece, watches his gorgeous wife in agony and suspicion as she goes about the house or accompanies him to political parties (he is an influential lawyer). Shot often in slow motion, the filmmaker emphasize Chantal’s distance and her almost preternatural status in her husband’s mind. He enters her room as she dresses, the backless gown revealing her rear cleavage. He helps her zip it up and then moves back as she indicates her displeasure at his touch. He moves toward her separate room down a long hall, and sees a glimpse of flesh and lingerie and the door closes in his face.
When Hearst is detained on suspicion of raping and murdering two young girls, the detective, Benezet (Morgan Freeman), puts Chantal in an adjoining room where Hearst can see her through a two-way mirror as a form of psychological pressure, hoping to extract a confession from his suspect (it turns out in the end that in fact Hearst was not the killer, even though he had relationships with both victims). Hearst expresses his frustration with his wife, even his hostility, when he tells Benezet: “A beautiful woman moves through this life unchallenged. ”To him she is the ultimate femme fatale, responsible because of her impenetrable façade for his own indiscretions (even though it is made clear in the movie that his pedophilia preexisted Chantal as his relationship with her began when she was only a pubescent teen).
Chantal stays with Hearst, even after his fling with her niece, because of his wealth and influence, but punishes him by her elusive sensual presence. When she finally learns of the depth of his perversion during the questioning at the police station, she spits at his face through the two-way mirror. Even though Hearst is cleared of the murders, the movie makes patent the fact that their relationship is now irreparably shattered when he refuses to face Chantal and instead slips away from her into the crowd of carnival revelers.
In 2001 Bellucci played the sorceress/ double agent for the Vatican in the French martial arts/horror epic The Brotherhood of the Wolf. In the movie she goes into deep cover as a courtesan in a mystical society which wishes to keep the peasants in ignorance and away from new ideas of “secularism” floating around during the 1700s. She seduces the hero of the film in order to gain information and his alliance. In a scene so typical of the way filmmakers have used Bellucci’s curvaceous body, their lovemaking ends with a shot of her full breasts and the line of her hips, which dissolves into the mountains and fields of the countryside, connecting her to Mother Nature. In the end she helps the hero by freeing him from jail through the use of a potion which produces a catatonic state.
In 2003, the Wachowski Brothers cast Bellucci as the dominatrix wife of the evil Merovingian in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Appropriately named after the goddess Persephone, Bellucci keeps her slaves around her at a fetish club/mansion and rules the roost there with her husband. Her aggressive sexuality even extends to the pure messiah, Neo (Keanu Reeves), holding him at gunpoint and demanding he offer her a kiss as payment for information to which she has access.
Like her compatriot Ornella Muti, Bellucci played the part of the prostitute turned apostle (at least in some versions of the story) Magdalene in Mel Gibson’s controversial and sadistic retelling of the Christ story, The Passion of the Christ, in 2004. In 2005, she returned to the horror genre with The Brothers Grimm. Bellucci is the evil Mirror Queen in this semi-comic fantasy.
Monica Bellucci as the Mirror Queen with her Isis-Hathor headdress, from The Brothers Grimm.
Like Persephone in The Matrix series, Bellucci excels in the role of a dominatrix who keeps slaves in her hideaway, driving metal spikes into their hearts as a sign of ownership. Her appearance as a shriveled corpse is gruesome; yet when her suitors gaze at her through the mirror, she is exquisite. Her double phallic headdress further reinforces her mythic dimensions, linking her to the Egyptian goddesses Hathor and Isis and their double-horned crowns.
Bertrand Blier’s How Much Do You Love Me?, like his other movies, is a comic exploration of sexual politics. The protagonist, François (Bernard Campan), first sees the prostitute Daniela (Bellucci) as she sits in a window of a sex club. Surrounded by neon lights, her face is, as in many of Bellucci’s roles, unreadable. Wrapped in furs and mysteriously composed, she is a modern Mona Lisa in a glass frame.
When François enters the bar, the Mother becomes the Whore as she lights up and becomes animated when the melancholy François tells her he has won the lottery and wants her to live with him. Daniela rushes him out the door and back to his apartment, making him promise to be “nice” to her. The overwhelmed François, who also has a weak heart, collapses on the steps as he watches her full rear sway before him.
On learning of his heart condition, Daniela promises to go slow with him but soon appears naked under her fur and ready for love. François cannot resist Daniela and so their lovemaking escalates. They have sex in numerous locations, including the seat of his car. Even though François’s doctor (who later collapses and dies after seeing Daniela nude) warns him about exerting himself, his desire compels him. And so he is willing to risk even death to be with this woman.
DQ (Monica Bellucci) agrees to help her cynical ex-lover, Smith (Clive Owen), from Shoot ’Em Up.
François (Bernard Campan) on his knees before his newfound idol, Daniela (Monica Bellucci), from How Much Do You Love Me?
The c
ouple’s “happy home” is shattered by the appearance of Daniela’s gangster husband /pimp Charly (Gerard Depardieu). He offers to sell Daniela to François for his lottery winnings. François refuses (we later find out he never won the lottery and had lied to Daniela). A disappointed Daniela returns to her profession and to Charly. She sinks back into sadness, on display once again in the sex club’s window. François finds that he too cannot exist without his “goddess.” He visits the club again. When a young prostitute tries to sweep the malleable François away, Daniela steps in. She returns to François in a romantic ending that is in keeping with the comedic tone of the film.
Shoot ’Em Up (2007) introduces Bellucci as a lactating prostitute feeding a client in her sumptuously decorated bed. As if this illustration of the mother/whore stereotype was not enough, the film develops this theme further by giving her the care of a child who assassin and ex-lover Smith (Clive Owen) is protecting from the bad guys. In a twist on most modern action films, where the warrior man is accompanied by or pitted against a warrior woman, Shoot ’Em Up is unusual in that the Bellucci character—DQ—uses her intelligence, her sexuality, and her mothering instincts rather than her battle prowess to not only protect and feed the child but also to support and aid the protagonist.
Salma Hayek
—Latin Princess
Salma Hayek’s personal life evidences many of the same qualities that audiences see in her characters. She has admitted in many interviews that she was “spoiled rotten” by her wealthy Lebanese-Mexican father. She was sent to the best schools, including a convent school in New Orleans (from which she was expelled for misbehavior). Her first notable acting gig was as the ambitious, demanding working-class girl Teresa in the Mexican telenovela of the same name (1989).
Leaving Mexico for the United States and what she hoped would be greater acting opportunities, Hayek faced stereotyping from the first. It took a young, adventurous director like Robert Rodriguez to finally see the femme fatale qualities in Hayek as well as her acting range. He cast her as Carolina in Desperado (1995), his big-budget sequel to his low-budget succès d’estime El mariachi. Although in the film Carolina works periodically for the drug lord that El (Antonio Banderas) is after, their sexual chemistry (evidenced by steamy sex scenes) pushes her onto El’s side in his quest to destroy the leader of the cartel.
Camilla (Salma Hayek) arrogantly waits on her insecure and infatuated customer (Colin Farrell), from Ask the Dust.
The dark and light Latin Bandidas—Sara (Salma Hayek) and Maria (Penelope Cruz), from Bandidas.
The next year, 1996, Rodriguez cast Hayek in a small but key role in his crime/vampire mishmash called From Dusk Till Dawn. In it she plays an Aztec princess/exotic dancer/vampire queen who presides over a neon-lit strip bar in Mexico. Two criminals, the Gecko brothers (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino), kidnap a middle-class family as protection and end up in the strip bar where they are to meet their connections. Hayek appears as the headliner of a bizarre stage show. She enters sporting an Aztec headdress and royal robes. Soon she disrobes and has a white boa constrictor wound around her body. As she dances on the table, she approaches the younger demented Gecko (Tarantino). She vamps him by offering her foot for him to worship and follows that up by spitting liquor into his mouth, which is agape at her erotic presence. The fun ends as she unleashes her vampire horde and the bloodletting begins.
Carolina (Salma Hayek), the sensual bookstore owner in Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado.
In 1997 Hayek moved to comedy with Fools Rush In, costarringTV megahit Friends superstar Matthew Perry. Perry plays Alex, a hopelessly conventional engineer who falls for the feisty and acerbic Latin Isabel (Hayek) when they meet in Las Vegas and have a one-night stand. Several months later Hayek tracks down Alex to tell him that she is pregnant. After he proposes, she takes him back to meet her parents. Alex not only has to deal with culture clash, but he needs to keep on his toes in order to appease the easily angered Isabel.
In Mike Figgis’s visually experimental, multicharacter Timecode (2000), Hayek plays Rose, an ambitious actress who deftly exploits her lover/agent Lauren (Jeanne Tripplehorn) as well as the emotionally disturbed director Alex (Stellan Skarsgard) in order to advance her career. While the distraught Lauren spies on Rose via an implanted listening device, the sexually charged actress has noisy and passionate sex with Alex in the office screening room.
Hayek’s status not only as an actor, but as a producer as well, was given a huge boost by her production of the biopic about the bisexual Mexican artist Frida Kahlo: Frida (2002). For her work as Frida, Hayek received an Oscar nomination and the film was honored repeatedly by various industry and critical organizations.
Poster for the neo-noir film Lonely Hearts.
In the comedy Western Bandidas (2006), Hayek plays a spoiled, snobbish heiress Sara who returns from Europe to find her father murdered by land robbers in league with North American capitalists. She joins forces with the sweet peasant girl Maria (Penelope Cruz), who Sara initially treats more like a servant than a partner-in-crime, and initiates a comic romp, robbing the banks of the land robbers and their benefactors.
The same year as Bandidas, Hayek turned in a poignant performance as Camilla, an ill-tempered Mexican immigrant working as a waitress in 1940s Los Angeles, in Robert Towne’s Ask the Dust. Camilla meets struggling writer Arturo Bandini (Colin Farrell) when he comes into her restaurant. Bandini, by his own admission inexperienced with women, falls in love with the proud Camilla. (He autographs his published story to her:
“To a Mayan princess, from a worthless gringo.”) Camilla returns his affection with hostility and distrust. So, out of basic insecurity, he adopts the persona of a “mean” (her word), cynical man of the world. Their meetings become verbal battles with a few pranks thrown in for good measure. (Camilla pretends she is drowning when they go swimming nude in the ocean; Bandini pours the beer she gave him into a spittoon.)
However, there is little doubt in the audience’s mind, largely because Bandini narrates his inner thoughts on screen, that he is obsessed with Camilla. He becomes jealous of her boyfriend, who she refuses to give up while she is “dating” Bandini. When she climbs in his window and displays her crotch to him, taunting the intimidated Bandini to make love to her and accusing him of being frightened, he has a premature ejaculation as he angrily initiates the lovemaking.
After a break from each other, Camilla returns with a bruised face given to her by her boyfriend, and the sympathetic Bandini offers to take her away to Laguna Beach, where he has rented a beach house to write.
Martha (Salma Hayek) comforts and encourages her increasingly reluctant lover-in-crime Ray (Jared Leto) as he buries their most recent victim, in Lonely Hearts.
This sequence acts as their idyllic moment in the film, a tradition in tragic love stories like this one. For in many ways this story is another version of Alexander Dumas’s (fils) Camille, evidenced not only by Camilla’s name but also by the camellias she wears in her hair and which Bandini treasures. The film even adopts Camille’s legendary sickness: tuberculosis. After another argument when Bandini refuses to marry her, Camilla takes off again. He later finds her location in the desert, dying in a filthy shack. He holds her in his arms as she dies and buries her with his own hands.
Lonely Hearts (2006) allows Hayek even more emotional range as the female half of the real-life “Honeymoon Killers”—who bilked and sometimes murdered war widows and lonely spinsters across the nation in the 1940s. Hayek plays Martha Beck, the “damaged goods” who answers one of con man Ray Fernandez’s (Jared Leto) responses to her lonely-hearts ad, and stays to become the sexual and murderous engine of the duo.
Martha lays her claim to Ray with due speed; and even though she goes along with his seductions of wealthy women, her jealousy is what motivates the bloody murders. When Ray is having sex with the first victim in the film, Martha listens in the opposite room. No longer able to stand it, she enters and shoots the woman in t
he head while she is on top of Ray. She pushes the woman aside and then mounts the bloody and horrified Ray, demanding he continue the sexual act with her.
Camilla (Salma Hayek) and Bandini (Colin Farrell) in their beachside hideaway in Laguna Beach, in Ask the Dust.
Whenever Martha feels that the unreliable Ray is beginning to wander, she reinforces her control through the most radical of means. While they are driving, Martha performs oral sex on Ray, causing him to swerve and a policeman to pull them over. When the policeman goes back to check the registration on the stolen car, she enters the police car and performs the same service on the cop while an outraged Ray watches in the rearview mirror. When she returns to the car, she places a gun to his genitals, telling him that she, not he, is in charge.
When the couple is finally apprehended by the obsessed Detective Robinson (John Travolta) and sentenced to the electric chair, Martha tells the officer she committed the murders because “Raymond is mine. He belongs to me.” When she enters the execution chamber after Raymond has been “fried,” she tells her guards ecstatically, “I can smell him. So sweet.”
In 2006 Hayek also moved back into television, coproducing the hit Ugly Betty (based on a popular Mexican telenovela) as well as playing in various episodes the conniving diva Sofia.
Femme Fatale: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies Page 21