Femme Fatales

I was pleasantly shocked when I saw this show. I expected the usual late night fare, but instead both of the first two episodes of Femme Fatales featured fun, fast-paced stories, recognizable actors, really nice production values, and great entertainment value, along with a heavy dose of sex and nudity. Unlike a previous reviewer, I think adding more sex would just ruin the pacing and make this just another late night show. As it is, it's a big step up into the big leagues of real programming for Cinemax. If this is indicative of what's coming from Cinemax in the future, I'll start watching the channel regularly. For now, I'll definitely be watching more of Femme Fatales.

I've watched three episodes of this so far and have become a fan.

As someone who is tired of reality crap and the same stale, safe plot formulas playing out on network and cable (please kill me before I watch yet another cop/CSI show), "FF" takes a collection of familiar elements and tosses them in a pop culture mix master set to high. Yeah, it's corny at times, but it's also alternately funny, suspenseful, sexy, smart and scary — all depending on the episode.

There are a lot of "grindhouse" elements here but without the gore or general "torture porn" mood of that genre. And while "Skinamax" fans are offered plenty of eye candy, the female characters are never debased or pointlessly exploited, and generally have the upper hand in the end. Yes, the femme fatales are the stars of "FF."

The most recent episode, "Something Like Murder" offers the most traditional "film noir" style of the show so far. And while it depends heavily on familiar characters — the plot was pretty clever, and the cast game. Dialoge-wise, it reminded of what Pauline Kael said about the modern noir classic "Body Heat": "Sounds like the characters have been boning up on Chandler novels." But is that so wrong? Just a wink and a nod to the source material inspirations.

I'm not sure where "FF" is going, but I'll stay along for the ride.

5.9/10? What were those viewers thinking? I think most IMDB users don't use their brains when rating a movie/tv show. It was a good show: a show of pornography and storytelling. It served the purpose of sexually arousing viewers, with some good stories. I loved the episode with a haunted house and the episodes where women sought revenge on men who hurt them. Big kudos to those actresses too. Good acting. Sorry but I couldn't stand those bosoms with silicones. I love all things natural. Also I loved how some stories connected to each other. You will see some faces that show up in multiple different places in different episodes. Great erotic tv series.

Well mostly not "cute" that is. Maybe a little QT (the cover art of the Box Sets indicating that this is "Sin City meets Tarantino"), but not a lot either. What it is though, is erotic short stories, with strong female leads. You may not always like where they are leading to, but most of them are very satisfying nonetheless (in more than one way as you can imagine).

Not every short story does the trick, but even the weaker ones have something that is at least worthwhile. Some are more predictable than others and some have more sex than others. Some of them are even connected (characters popping up at different episodes making it a fun watch). Give the show a try. Curious to see if there is a third season with even more guest appearances (second season had Eric Roberts, Vivica A. Fox and others)

I sometimes here the proverb that "this film is so bad that's good," and I never believed it. But then "Femme Fatales" assaulted my senses. "Femme Fatales" is such a hilariously stupid porno series that it's surprisingly good. Most of the dialogue was so incredibly ridiculous that it could not possibly be taken seriously and probably was not even meant to be. Yet at the same time, my reaction to the stupid lines was not boredom or disgust, but amusement, because the screen writers miraculously gave this idiotic dialogue an originality and a quirky black humour that I frankly have never seen before in any porno. The plot lines were preposterous, but they were so fast-paced, so difficult to predict (there is nothing worse than a movie or series that you can predict), so breathtakingly violent and savage and so unusual that I did not even care that much about the flaws. Finally the acting may not be the best in the world, but for a porno series it is pretty exceptional. I challenge anyone to prove that Hanna Harper, Bree Olson or Steven St. Croix can act better than cast for the Femme Fatales series.

Owing to the bold and breathtaking approach "Femme Fatales" takes to its own subject matter, I suspect that this series is going to be very controversial. Yet if you like porn and are open to something radically different, then you may want to give this series a try.

6.7/10