Femme Fatale as Fatal to Feminism
Phyllis, the femme fatale, and Lola, the naïve stepdaughter, demonstrate interesting conflicts for feminist film observers to resolve. Both are complex characters that make it difficult to conclude the film’s message about women. Fundamentally, however I conclude that the film portrays women as evil or powerless, neither of which promotes a positive view.
Phyllis is portrayed as calculating, cruel and a murderer—hardly positive adjectives. Her evil side is complemented by her beauty, sexual prowess and what Naremore describes as “adept with firearms� (19). While her character does upset traditional stereotypes of ugly equating with evil and beauty equating with good, it places women in an entirely negative category—either they are ugly and evil or beautiful and evil. Her manipulative wiles might speak well toward empowerment and agency, but her character is fundamentally criticized and ultimately killed for using her womanly empowerment in socially unacceptable arenas. We might even be able to shrug her off as “too in love to realize that she was wrong� except that Lola’s description of her repeat murdering tendency indicate that Phyllis is at her core corrupted.
Lola contrasts Phyllis’s evil with moral goodness, but even she does not portray femininity positively. Instead of being evil, Lola is uninformed and naïve. Even when she acknowledges her stepmother’s evil ways, she only cries and doesn’t actively combat them but rather turns to a man for help. Her inability to act even when she notices evil displays her as weak.