femme fatale

femme fatale

A mysterious and attractive woman who puts men in dangerous or compromising situations. James Bond is always able to see through the evil plot of the femme fatale.
See also: fatale, femme
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

(be) a ˌfemme faˈtale

(from French) a beautiful woman that men find sexually attractive but who brings them trouble or unhappiness: The movie follows the relationship between sexy femme fatale Suzy and young lawyer Jim, which eventually leads to a murderous crime of passion.
The meaning of the French expression is ‘disastrous woman’.
See also: fatale, femme
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary

femme fatale

An attractive woman who is, for one reason or another, dangerous. French for “fatal woman,” the term has been used in English since about 1900, and today it is often used more ironically than seriously. Michael Arlen used it in The Green Hat (1924): “So you heard about it from that femme fatale, did you?” Much more recently Richard Dyer used it in the sense of “very glamorous” in describing the singer who played the leading role in the opera Carmen: “She’s physically and vocally limber, and revels in her femme-fatale look” (Boston Globe, March 24, 2005).
See also: fatale, femme
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • a femme fatale
  • fatale
  • evil be to him who evil thinks
  • the evil one
  • see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil
  • badger
  • badger game
  • the thick plottens
  • inform on
  • inform on (one)
References in periodicals archive
Rather than align Faulkner with one coherent attitude toward the femme fatale, or to establish one point at which his attitude toward it changed unequivocally, I suggest that his work is interesting for the different inflections the figure takes on.
"Lady Tiger in a Tea Gown": Decadence, Kitsch, and Faulkner's femme fatale
The popularity of the association between women, snakes, and temptation even spread to the theatre where actress Sarah Bernhardt, a femme fatale in both her professional and private lives, portrayed characters such as Medea and Cleopatra.
Evil by Design: The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale
She draws a parallel between the femme fatale stories and the Western detective genre in the sense that "both deal with the bizarre, lewd or sensational in such a way that they appear plausible and logical" (12).
Anne E. McLaren, The Chinese Femme Fatale: Stories from the Ming Period
24 to 25 the museum will also host a two-day symposium on fashion and the femme fatale in Belle Epoque Paris.
FIT flaunts Femme Fatales. (New York)
So when I saw her in her ultimate femme fatale role, in Lang's The Woman in the Window, the only question that bothered me was: Did Lang do it with her or not?
SLAVOJ ZIZEK: JOAN BENNETT
"Femme Fatale" will mark a return to de Palma's early moviemaking style, Gefter says.
De Palma places Banderas in sights
The looks ranged from Valeria's own natural look to the more dramatic femme fatale. The event took place at the Paseo Alcorta Mall in Buenos Aires Sept.
Supermodel Launches Makeup Line in Native Land
The star, who gave birth to her second child Rocco last month, also revealed she was struggling to find any movie roles she likes because people now typecast her as a 'femme fatale' - or a mother with difficult children.
Post Script
THE first femme fatale hairdresser was played by Hedy Lamarr in the 1949 film Samson and Delilah.
Femmes fatales..ladies of lust..or just a bit on the side..the women who changed history between the sheets
Only at this point has she really become a femme fatale. Rudloff cites Deleuze in support of the notion thatWanda is only apparently sadistic when, as domina, she tortures Severin; the dominating masochistic trait in Severin's psychology is what matters, not the fact that the masochist has had the good fortune to meet a sadist, as is commonly supposed.
Pelzdamen: Weiblichkeitsbilder bei Thomas Mann und Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Together with Die Buchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box), the second part of the original work, Earth Spirit relates the experiences of Lulu, an amoral femme fatale. In Earth Spirit, Lulu's first husband dies when he finds her with another man, her second husband kills himself, and she kills the third.
Earth Spirit
Imabelle, as the femme fatale in A Rage in Harlem, is described as "a cushioned-upped, hot-bodied, banana-skin chick with the speckled-brown eyes of a teaser and the high-arched, ball-bearing hips of a natural-born amante" (6).
Noir by noirs: towards a new realism in Black cinema
" In the early 20th century, vampire, or vamp, meant a femme fatale, a beautiful but heartless woman who lures men to moral destruction.
Vampire
Organized like George Plimpton's and Jean Stein's book on the femme fatale Warhol socialite, Edie Sedgwick, Mailer begins with little Norman in short pants and ends with him writing Tough Guys Don't Dance to pay the bills.
Mailer: his life and times