The story opens with a heist at the Cannes Film Festival. This being ersatz French cinema, much of the heist action is required to involve scenes at urinals, but for all the guys in the house, we also get a nice little dose of HLA (hot lesbian action) between Romijn-Stamos and a nearly naked fashion model. There's also a fat French guy with a stereotypical Asterix-like mustache, and a welcome performance by magnetic Lumumba star Eriq Ebouaney. Unfortunately, there's also a very conspicuous score by Ryuichi Sakamoto, one that doesn't let up and can't decide if it's retro or experimental. Either way, it's too conspicuous and annoying.
At any rate, the heist sequence is kinda fun, but the story goes downhill afterward, as Romijn-Stamos escapes and conveniently meets her doppelgänger who -- just as conveniently -- dies shortly thereafter. This allows the American jewel thief to become bereaved French housewife Lily, marry an ambassador, and seemingly live the next seven years of her life maintaining a fake Gallic accent. Some of this stuff seems clearly intended as a joke, but it's never quite apparent how much.
The action resumes when "Lily" returns to France with her ambassador hubby and catches the eye of a down-and-out photographer (Antonio Banderas) who stands to make some good money from tabloid shots of her. Meanwhile, in another locale labeled "Prison Road, South of France" (to save De Palma the effort of having to actually show a prison), fellow jewel thief Ebouaney is set free, still wearing his freshly bloodstained tux from the heist.
Needless to say, Banderas and Romijn-Stamos get involved, professionally and otherwise, most notably in a lap-dance sequence that's worth the price of a video rental some months from now. Now here's the shocker: She may be double-crossing him! Not that he doesn't deserve it -- anyone who falls for the seduction line "All your boyhood stories make you so damn lovable" has to be pretty dense. He seems sort of aware that he's being double-crossed, but doesn't manage to prepare for the inevitable very well.
De Palma comes across as quite pleased with himself, especially over a credulity-stretching finale invoking fate and chaos theory that may have been partially inspired by Memento. Though it involves an absolutely idiotic turn of events, it culminates in a sequence that's well-choreographed, repeating certain motifs in a way that may make you want to go back and watch certain scenes over again . . . providing you've already blanked on how tedious they were the first time. He's planted clues to the ending throughout, regardless of whether they make sense -- a poster that's constantly being torn down in the background depicts Romijn-Stamos' face and the title "Deja Vue 2008," despite the fact that her character has allegedly never been photographed in France.
A minor pet peeve, notable primarily because it's become a De Palma trend, also needs to be addressed: Don't use the Internet as a plot point if you don't understand it in the least. Many laughed at Mission: Impossible's implausible, incorrect-terminology-using 'Net surfing; now more will laugh at the notion that a kidnapper would send a ransom note from a personal e-mail address. Yes, it's supposed to be a frame-up, but no crook of any competence would be that stupid.
Romijn-Stamos is competent as an actor, even granted lines like "America is a country very big, no?" and "You don't have to lick my ass, just fuck me!" but her best trait remains a proclivity for shedding clothes whenever the action calls for it (or not, actually). Banderas, on the other hand, plays it like the kind of role his character in Spy Kids is supposed to be a parody of -- see Gary Cole in I-Spy, and ask yourself if he wouldn't have been at least more amusing herein. Peter Coyote, as Romijn-Stamos' ambassador husband, acquits himself the best, giving multiple layers to his relatively minor character. It's about time he showed up again in a real movie.
