Femme Fatale: Why do we love manipulative and sexy women?

Evil Heroines: The femme fatale who brings men to their knees

MF editorial team

24 May 2014

updated the 14 July 2015 à 18:35

She casts a spell over the male with her beauty. And then proceeds to do whatever she wants – wherever she goes, she takes hold of the reins! And as we watch, flabbergasted and horrified in the theatre, we know we secretly love it.

The star? The femme fatale of those dark films that “make their beauty a weapon of power,” says Didier Roth-Bettoni, film critic and author of “Les Pages Noir des méchants” (The Dark Pages of the villains) (ed. Milan). A few decades and a sexual revolution later, this woman has even been “CindyLauperised” – she wants some fun too! Now her weapon certainly is used for power, but also for pleasure.

Catherine Tramell, the ambiguous heroine in Basic Instinct, encapsulated by Sharon Stone, does proves this exact point. She embodies a superwoman fantasy “who literally brings men to their knees,” says Katia Denard, thereby avenging all her counterparts. This femme fatale also does not hesitate to blame all wrongdoings on the males, in as concrete a manner as Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl, who holds a senior position in finance.

Or more symbolically, “Catherine Tramell kills men with an ice pick, an object that can be seen as an extension of the phallus,” Katia Denard maliciously notes. In the office or in bed, the bitch commands, and the spectators want more.