The film opens with Laure and her male partners executing a jewel heist at the Cannes Film Festival; the jewelry is a diamond-studded gold snake worn by Veronica, which Laure plans to steal by seducing her. This is the set-up for the infamous bathroom sex scene between Laure and Veronica that takes up several minutes of the beginning of the film.

But things don't go exactly as planned, and shortly thereafter, Laure is knocked out in a fall while being pursued by her former partners, and when she wakes up, is mistaken for someone else: a woman named Lilly who recently lost her husband and young daughter. It's difficult to explain more without giving too much of the story away, but the rest of the film involves a series of plot twists and turns that focus heavily on Laure/Lilly's interactions with a photographer, Nicolas (played by Antonio Banderas) as she alternates between sexy and deadly, charming and immoral.

Evaluation of the movie's representation of bisexuality depends primarily on whether you analyze the movie solely on its own merits, or in the context of the current lack of cinematic representations of bisexuality. Since portrayals of bisexuality and bisexual women are rare in mainstream films, the few that do exist tend to have a disproportionate impact on bisexual visibility overall; from this standpoint, Femme Fatale clearly reinforces the "evil bisexual" stereotype by linking bisexuality with criminal, immoral, and manipulative behavior.

But viewing it as a stand-alone film, divorced from its larger context, Femme Fatale appears to actually challenge conventional stereotypes of bisexuality because Laure has a more enduring and authentic relationship with Veronica than with anyone else, even if it is not Laure's primary romantic attachment.

In this way, Femme Fatale both reinforces and challenges existing stereotypes of bisexuality and bisexual women, which is one of the reasons the film is more complicated than it first appears.

Laure is clearly a guy's version of a femme fatale (as evinced by lots of gratuitous nudity, stripping, and a sex-on-the-pool-table scene), and her bisexuality is also of the male-fantasy type (since although she may have sex with women, her primary romantic identification is clearly with men). But that doesn't mean there isn't something in the movie for women, too, especially lesbian and bi women.

Laure kicks ass and takes names throughout the film without apology, and is unrepentant to the end. Laure usually uses her sexuality as a tool for manipulation rather than an expression of passion, but the choices she makes throughout the film are clearly her own, and this is what prevents Femme Fatale from being purely male-fantasy fluff. A feminist icon she ain't, but Laure's no puppet for the patriarchy, either. The sex scene between Laure and Veronica is also one of the most realistic (ignoring the jewel-heist context) and sexy lesbian sex scenes in a mainstream movie.

Rebecca Romjin-Stamos is perfectly cast as Laure/Lilly, an inspired choice for the lead role: a familiar face that seems new at the same time. She demonstrates her versatility as an actress by changing personas as easily as her shape-shifting character Mystique in X-Men, morphing from a bisexual jewel thief to a grieving widow to a cold-blooded killer and back again.

While many have criticized the film's storyline as implausible and lacking credibility, the truth is that this doesn't really matter: the characters are engaging and attractive and there's lots of action and sex, which means the plot only has to be minimally believable to make the film at least worth watching. Femme Fatale delivers exactly what you'd expect: an enjoyable romp through male fantasy-land offset by a subversive feminist undercurrent and a shout-out to lesbian and bisexual viewers.

Which puts the film squarely in the "fun, sexy trash" category for me.