Femme Fatale - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): To Die For; Femme Fatal; Femmes Fatales

Whatever she did, be glad it wasn't to you.

Sam Spade: You won't need much of anybody's help. You're good. Chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like 'Be generous, Mr. Spade.'

Brigid O'Shaughnessy: I deserve that. But the lie was in the way I said it, not at all in what I said. It's my own fault if you can't believe me now.

Sam Spade: Ah, now you are dangerous.

— The Maltese Falcon

She's stunningly beautiful and alluring, and she knows it. Made famous by Film Noir, Femme Fatales straddle the line between good and evil and confuse the hero's moral bearings with their undeniable aura of sexiness and danger. He knows she's walking trouble and that she 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 an Action Girl with a similar gentle attitude), the Femme Fatale exploits her sexual appeal to be a Manipulative Bastard and wrap men around her finger, which can be quite a refreshing change from the submissive women rescued by the hero or the more active girls who remain sweet and clean-cut outside the battlefield. 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.

Often the Lady In Red.

What separates the Femme Fatale from The Vamp is that the Femme Fatale often shows signs that she can be redeemed or is not wholly evil (often, more like disenchanted, tragic and broken), while The Vamp is so black-hearted that there's no chance of her becoming good.

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 Charlies Angels. They are using their feminine wiles in an artificial context to snare the bad guy... all for the greater good, of course.

If she can fight, too, then she's really going to be trouble.

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 sleazy detective'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.

The younger version of this is the Fille Fatale.

Ironically the 'heroine' of the film To Die For is not this trope - she's The Vamp.