"They’re the kind of dames who can wear floor-length gowns and look completely naked. The kind with hair piled up on their head like compliant serpents, or falling down in smooth lustrous waves. Dames with hard faces and mocking smiles and eyes that sized you up and found you wanting . . . but you’d do, for now."
The morally ambiguous Femme Fatale is the typical client in a hardboiled detective story. You know the type. Dressed all in black with legs up to here, she slinks into the PI's office, holding a cigarette on a long, long holder, saying "Oh, Mr. Rockhammer, you're the only one who can help me find out who killed my extremely wealthy husband." Did she do it? Do I care?Where'd that saxophone music come from? Whatever her story is, whether she did it or not, she's definitely keeping some secrets.
She's stunningly beautiful and alluring, and she knows it. Made famous by Film Noir and hard-boiled detective stories, the Femme Fatale manipulates and confuses the hero with her undeniable aura of sexiness and danger. He knows that she's walking trouble and knows much more about the bad guys than she should, but damn it if he can't resist her feminine wiles.
Unlike the virginal and sweet Damsel In Distress (or Action Girl with a similarly gentle attitude), the Femme Fatale exploits with everything she's got to wrap men around her finger. However, Status Quo is God, so by the end of the story, the Femme Fatale must either be reformed by the hero to the side of good and lose much of her appeal in the process, or be outwitted by him to her doom.
If the Femme Fatale is vying for the hero's romantic attentions, she will almost never win because of her illegal and low means of beating out her sweeter and purer rival, and the hero will decide that she's not worth the trouble she causes. This remains true even if she becomes a reformed character.
What separates the Femme Fatale from The Vamp is that the Femme Fatale uses femininity and sensuality instead of upfront sexual advances. Her wiles include apparent helplessness and distress, and appeals to the man's greed, desire for revenge, or gullibility, as well as the implication of possible romance or just sexual rewards, compared to The Vamp's reliance on raunchy sex or the promise of it and utter amorality otherwise.
While the Femme Fatale is generally evil, or at least morally conflicted, there are occasional exceptions, most notably, the leading ladies of Mission: Impossible or Charlie's Angels. They are using their feminine wiles in an artificial context to snare the bad guy...all for the greater good, of course.
Often the Lady in Red, and even more often the Woman in Black, but possibly dressed like everyone else so as to not be Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. The Femme Fatale is one of the female character types that can often be seen wearing Opera Gloves, especially in conjunction with her sexy evening gowns, and, during the daytime (particularly in old Film Noir movies), is often seen wearing a "fascinator" or "pillbox" hat with a partial- or full-face veil. Not above using the Kiss of Distraction.
If she can fight, too, then she's really going to be trouble.
The younger version of this is the Fille Fatale.
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The anime also had Psiren, a Phantom Thief that behaved this way while she was in disguise—particularly since she had a tattoo on her chest that allowed her to use alchemy, meaning she had to open the top of her shirt and reveal her cleavage to use it.
Nao Yuuki from Mai-HiME, with claws to match. She uses her feminine wiles to lure overly eager sexual predators with promises of dating them and separate them from their money as a sort-of revenge for the family she lost: thugs robbed her family, killed her father, and left her mom in a Convenient Coma. (Oh, and she can fight, too.)
CC from Code Geass fits the description pretty well. Later, she's revealed to be something of a Broken Bird under the mask.
Lily Maguire from the first Fatal Fury OAV. She's one of the few cases where the Femme Fataledoes win the heart of The Hero, in this case, Terry Bogard, only to tragically die in his arms.
Evangeline, with the interesting twist of being biologically ten. She still acts the part and usually has a much bustier adult form which she prefers.
Not surprisingly, due to its noirish roots, Sin City has quite a few. Almost every female character counts, and Dwight is the one that gets in trouble with them as they tend to go back and forth between Damsel In Distress and The Vamp. The most triumphant example from the series is in The Babe Wore Red. Dwight said it best:
Dwight: The moment I lay eyes on her, I know I'm in trouble.
Moonstone (Karla Sofen) from the Thunderbolts and also as Ms. Marvel in Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers.
Inglourious Basterds' Bridget Von Hammersmark arguably qualifies, as a beautiful 1940s German movie star plotting against the Nazis, who is responsible for the death of a dozen men - both Nazis and Allies - and even shoots one herself.
Disney's version of The Three Musketeers gives this role to Milady de Winter, who even reforms at the last moment and helps the heroes before dying. In the book, however, she is evil to the bone.
At least one non-Disney version keeps her evil and has her executed at the end in vengeance for all of her nasty actions throughout the movie. This particular version was split into two volumes, the second of which was subtitled "The Revenge of Milady".
Subverted in the Thunderbirds film. We hear the voice of the Big Bad's female assistant, and then she climbs down a ladder. Large butt, horrible fashion sense, bad skin, bad teeth, frizzy hair, and big glasses, and, later on, she nearly rapes the Thunderbirds' team scientist. The last one is just barely played for comedy.
The first Austin Powers movie has Alotta Fagina, played by the almost painfully hot Fabiana Udenio.
Jessica from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. She's a toon clearly created by some artist to be the perfect Femme Fatal, from her dangerous good looks and sultry voice, to the slinky way she moves. Even her smile is suspicious. It turns out that she's the Red Herring and was telling the truth all along. She really isn't bad! Just drawn that way.
The Black Queen from Barbarella. And, for that matter, every other character that has ever had that name.
The shade of Mal in Inception. She killed or tried to kill someone in about every other scene she was in, but she still gave the hero pause when he was faced with stopping her.
Mini from Mini's First Time skirts the edge of this and Fille Fatale, although, given just how truly evil she is, she also qualifies as The Vamp.
Francesca of That Lady In Ermine was thought to be this, as she saved her castle from an invading army by entering the army's Duke's tent, and then stabbing him in the back. It turned out that there were more details than this, but to most hearing this, she seemed like this trope.
Scherazade from Arabian Nights manages the interesting achievement of being a heroic rather then villainous Femme Fatale, who is still perfectly proper according to the values of her culture, and very sexy nonetheless.
Pamela Widmerpool from Dance to the Music of Time.
Josephine Balsamo, the recurring enemy of Arsène Lupin.
Laetitia de Malreich/Dolores Kesselbach, the villain in "813".
Denna/Dianna/Dinneih, or whatever else she's calling herself when she appears, from The Name of the Wind.
In The Stainless Steel Rat action/comedy series by Harry Harrison, thief turned galactic secret agent 'Slippery Jim' DiGritz finds himself up against the psychotic (yet beautiful and criminally brilliant) Angelina. Jim falls in love and marries her in the next novel of the series. Supposedly, the psych-techs have straightened out Angelina's twisted personality, implanting her with a conscience, but there are times when her husband has to restrain Angelina's natural enthusiasm for torture and killing. Plus, Jim quickly learns the inadvisablity of showing interest in other women, or trying to wriggle out of promises (an attempt to back out of their marriage is stopped by Angelina shoving a .75 calibre recoil free pistol up his nose).
In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel Ghostmaker, Inquisitor Lilith actively tries to incite jealousy in Gaunt as a way to manipulate him. Gaunt calls her on it and tells her it's not needed, he will help voluntarily. She admits at the time that she's not used to voluntary cooperation and, later, when about to go through a gate to an Eldar craftworld, that she actually found Gaunt attractive.
Patience Kys in the Ravenor books by the same author is a heroic example, she is a somewhat hostile Ice Queen who tends to use her attractiveness to her advantage on covert operations.
Selena Coombs of American Gothic. In an interesting inversion, however, her primary sexual usage in the show, aside from being Buck's mistress, is not to turn a good man evil, but to keep a man nominally on the side of evil—Ben Healy—from defecting to the good.
Sam Marquez on Las Vegas works for a casino. Specifically, her job is to keep 'whales' - big spenders - happy. Once, she only slept with a guy because he was dying, and she has openly called herself a slut. Strangely, she rarely sleeps with any of the whales themselves, and had to start going to a therapist later in the series after she was abducted and nearly raped and killed.
Star Trek: Voyager. Queen Arachnia in the Captain Proton holoprogram is a clear homage to this type. Even Mad Scientist Dr. Chaotica is totally smitten by her.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Nicole Wallace, who is likely based on Marie-Andrée Leclerc, an accomplice of the serial killer Charles Sobhraj. Sobhraj was the inspiration for Wallace's mentor, Bernard Fremont.
Miss Parker from The Pretender. Makes her entrance stomping out a cigarette on an oil tanker, shoots at the good guy a lot, has UST with him, and regularly growls at and intimidates most men within range.
Dollhouse: Adelle DeWitt - charming, morally grey ballbuster who is equally at home with threats and seduction, and approaches Darth Vader levels of nastiness in the second season. She is. In. Charge.
In the episode Noir, an episode with all the Smallville characters in a Film Noir, Lana takes the role of the Femme Fatale, having an affair with Clark Kent, an undercover cop, killing her husband, Lex, and framing Jimmy for the murder.
A contemporary but classic example is Alicia Baker from season three's "Obsession", who decides she's going to have Clark no matter what it takes.
Lady Christina de Souza from Doctor Who seemed to want to be one.
The younger River Song was clearly intended to be something like this. Not only does she show up in a long black dress, dark glasses, and stiletto heels, but she wears hallucinogenic lipstick.
Cameron of The Sarah Connor Chronicles has more than once used her physical body's attractiveness to coldly manipulate people, up to and including John Connor himself. It is implied that this was, in fact, the entire reason she was built. Her external appearance was based on a girl named Allison Young, who was implied to be either a close friend or lover of the future John Connor, and Cameron interrogated Allison to learn her mannerisms before attempting to take her place.
Weaver has a significant femme fatale streak as well.
A villanous example is Commandant Mele-On Grayza from Farscape. In addition to being very attractive with well-displayed breasts, she also secretes a chemical from a gland between her breasts that literally hypnotized men into doing her bidding.
On Weeds, Nancy may not seem like it at first, but she has this effect on men. They seem to be attracted to her despite the fact that she brings chaos to everything she touches.
The Shadow Line has Petra Nayler, girlfriend of the missing Glickman. She seduces the married Joseph Bede using her apparent helplessness, and is later revealed to have done this to Glickman too, under the orders of Counterpoint. Not only that, she only went to Bede to look for leads on Glickman's location, so she could kill him for trying to expose the conspiracy.
In Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Skydivers, Mike and the 'bots peg Suzy as the femme fatale of the film. Except they deliberately mispronounce it as "femmee fatalee".
Music
The woman being sung about in "Mousetrap Heart" by Thirsty Merc.
Femme Fatale is the name of Britney Spears' seventh album.
Lana Del Rey's Kind Outta Luck.
Opera
Some of the more well-loved female lead roles are femme fatales, i.e. Violetta Valéry from La Traviata, Kundry from Parsifal, Musetta from La Bohème, and Carmen from Carmen.
Played pretty literally in Banjo-Kazooie, seeing as the ONLY time you actually see Gruntilda as being sexy is when you get the GAME OVER.
Ada Wong from the Resident Evil series initially showed very mild Distressed Damsel qualities in her first appearance, but by the fourth game in the series, there was no question that she was a first-class Femme Fatale, to the point that it's clear in retrospect that her originally helpless was playact the whole time. Trying to figure out which side the girl is on and if she's going to help you or hurt you can give you (and poor Leon) a serious headache.
In Resident Evil 5, Excella Gionne is an interesting subversion of this trope in terms of who she claims to help (Wesker) and, inevitably, how much power she holds over him. In the end, it's Wesker who betrays Excella and not the other way around, leaving her wailing, pitifully calling out Wesker's name. Of course, her Uroboros form is a gigantic squid thing that can only be taken down by a LASER SATELLITE, so she kinda makes up for that.
Naomi in Metal Gear Solid 1 and 4. According to the backstory, she seduced Richard Ames away from his wife, Nastasha Romanenko, in order to get onto the FoxDie project so she could modify it to kill Snake. She spent the game until the bombshell alternately acting very cold towards him and drooling over him. She has good intentions though.
Millenia from Grandia II. Complicated by the fact that she's the alter ego of virginal Distressed Damsel Elena. Neither of them get the guy.
Soul Calibur's Ivy more or less fits this trope, using sex appeal in her costume and rather...dominating imagery in her moves. She starts out helping the Big Bad of the series in thanks for giving life to her weapon. She does go full-out good in her intentions later on...the costume and moves remain though.
She also subverts the trend brutally, because she's a Celibate Hero, for fear that having a child would give the Soul Edge another potential vessel. Considering that who her birth father is, well, said fears aren't that far from the truth.
Mona Sax from Max Payne IS this trope. Although love ends up causing her to team up with Max.
Ultimecia in Final Fantasy VIII is this. When she's possessing Edea - who normally wears a very simple and modest dress - she makes her wear incredibly ornate and over-the-top "sexy" clothing. When you finally meet her in person, the costume she has on is, to say the least, extravagant. She uses her body to get what she wants, and was openly called a Femme Fatale in the spin-off game Dissidia.
Anna and Nina Williams from Tekken certainly qualify. Nina focuses on the fatale part while Anna is the more feminine and flirtatious of the two.
Quite possibly, Viletta Vadim from Super Robot Wars, starting out as The Mole of the team for Ingram and is a deadly pilot in combat. This is later subverted as Viletta and Ingram have good intentions, despite coming off as rather strict and oh-so-much a Magnificent Bastard for Ingram, not flat out evil. Her looks also gave her the distinction of being one of Excellen's 'Three Beautiful Sisters' and the only person she'd goLes Yay with. To hammer it home, her theme song was re-named to this trope when Original Generation got a US translation by Atlus (it was formerly 'Woman The Cool Spy').
Neverwinter Nights mod The Bastard of Kosigan has Alex, with the modification that, by the time of The Reveal, she is most definitely evil.
Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect 2, referred to as such in the Collector's Edition Art Book.
Viktoria from the Thief series fits this to a tee, especially in the first game.
Viconia De'Vir from Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, especially 2. She is loyal, though.
Dark Saber in FateStayNight, during the scene that is titled "Femme Fatale". During this scene, Shirou can't bring himself to kill Saber due to his attachment to her, but it is due to these attachments that he ends up in a very horrible Bad End. All the horribleness is caused to Sakura and not Saber though.
In Thief The Dark Project, Viktoria plays this to Garrett's Noir action hero, tempting him with greed, the power of an exotic blade, and though her seduction isn't overt, it's heavily implied in cutscenes that she pays his retainer carnally. Without Constantine's leadership in Metal Age, she becomes less this, but still remains Strange Bedfellows.
Sylvia Christel from No More Heroes, who manages to convince an impoverished otaku living in a cheap motel to use his laser sword that he got off the internet to murder people. Granted, said otaku wasn't exactly a prince himself in terms of morality.
Fiora Cavazza (from the Assassin's Creed series), although she's leaning more of a Vamp; she has a lot more attributes than sex. Plus, a Vamp cannot be "corrupted". She eventually has a change of heart, and double crosses the Templars and helps the Assassins. Unfortunately, her life ends in the hands of Cesare Borgia when he catches her stealing the Apple.
Karen Parker of Prototype, especially she's working for Blackwatch all along.
Blackarachnia from Transformers: Beast Wars plays this to the hilt when she gets a chance, towards allies and enemies alike, though she does less flirting and more fighting than is usual for this trope. The choice of a black widow spider as her alternate mode is surprisingly appropriate, though she's not without redeeming qualities.
The Blackarachnia in Transformers Animated fulfills this trope whenever it's convenient for her, either with the Autobots or the Dinobots. Optimus Prime is especially vulnerable to falling for this no matter how many times she does it. It does make you wonder why she considers herself such a horrific freak, when everyone with a spark seems to want to jump her thorax.
Though the flirting stopped when his father (the Burglar who shot Ben Parker) decided to remain in prison to repent. She hates Spider-Man for this and will never forgive him.
Karai in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 series). First, she tries to convince Leo that she's honourable. Then, she stabs him right after he saves her life. Then, she tries to kill his entire family.
