Defensive? Him?

TORONTO--If you were judging him on his current reputation, Brian De Palma would barely get a passing grade, especially for most of his 1990s movies, which include such underwhelming fare as “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Snake Eyes” and “Mission to Mars.”

Something of a critic’s darling early in his career, when he made funky comedies and clever horror films, De Palma has become the personification of a Hollywood hack. As film historian David Thomson put it: “He’s the epitome of mindless style and excitement--he has contempt for his characters and audiences alike.”

But if you were grading the veteran film director on his ardor for film festivals, he gets an honor roll A. At a cinema bazaar like the Toronto International Film Festival, which concluded its 10-day run Saturday with the North American debut of De Palma’s new film, “Femme Fatale,” even the most lunatic movie buff would be lucky to see 20 movies in a week, especially if you leave time for eating, sleeping and celebrating the pleasures of the new Chen Kaige or Pedro Almodovar film. But by the time I caught up with De Palma, he was already on pace to reach 30 films before festival’s end.

Yes, De Palma has a film to promote, an erotic thriller starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Antonio Banderas that has a vitality and verve that hasn’t been seen in his films since the days of “Dressed to Kill” and “Body Double.” But the 62-year-old director would be in Toronto anyway--he’s the ultimate festival junkie. His new film even has a prolonged heist sequence set at Cannes. De Palma is a regular here and at Cannes, as well as at festivals in Rotterdam, Holland; Montreal; Venice, Italy; and Berlin.

While other directors here were ferried around in limos, accompanied by a phalanx of publicists, De Palma was largely anonymous, attending screenings by himself. When critic Roger Ebert couldn’t get into a screening here one night, he threw what one local paper called “a hissy fit,” nearly causing an international incident. When De Palma couldn’t get into a screening of “Russian Ark,” a Russian-German film shot in one 96-minute take, he simply found something else to see.

When I beseeched him to see “City of God,” a Miramax film from Brazil that was my favorite festival entry, he brushed it off, saying he doesn’t bother with films that he can eventually see at the theater around the corner from where he lives in Greenwich Village. Instead, he sought out obscure work from Iran, Israel and Korea. “I can’t get enough of Korean movies,” he said, chastely sipping bottled water at the bar of the posh King Edward Hotel here. “There’s lots of things happening in these Korean films. I want more--South Korea, here I come.”

Once he did play his director’s card. Having already missed Mike Figgis’ film “Hotel” when it played here last September, De Palma went to a midnight showing in Rotterdam earlier this year. Stuck near the end of a long line, he began to worry that he’d get shut out again. Flagging down a young festival staffer, he said, “Could you give me a break? I’m Brian De Palma.” The staffer gave him a skeptical glance and said, “You’re not Brian De Palma.”

“They never believe it’s me. What would Brian De Palma be doing standing in line for a midnight showing of a Mike Figgis movie?” He frowned. “Why is it that I’ve never seen another director at these festivals? All I see is people like you.”

By “you,” De Palma, of course, means his critical detractors. It’s one of the great ironies of his career. His old friend Martin Scorsese may have seen more movies, but no American director has a better intellectual grasp of film history than De Palma. Underneath those khaki bush jackets he’s worn for years beats the heart of a true cinephile. Despite having made a host of enduring films in his five-decade career, from “Carrie” to “Dressed to Kill” to “The Untouchables,” De Palma has gotten the kind of critical reception that a wildcat oil driller gets at a Sierra Club convention.

Even movies that are now considered classics, like “Scarface,” which is easily the most influential movie among hip-hop fans everywhere, were trashed when they first appeared. “The reaction to ‘Scarface’ was horrid--everyone said it was bloody and despicable,” De Palma recalled. “ ‘Carrie’ was dismissed as a ridiculous B-movie by everyone, except for Pauline Kael, and even she didn’t like ‘Scarface.’ ”

De Palma bristled when it became apparent that I shared his detractors’ disdain for his recent work. “I think you missed a lot in ‘Mission to Mars,’ ” he said brusquely. “It’s a beautiful-looking film. All the critics ever talked about was the banality of the story.”

But wasn’t it incredibly banal? “Give me a break,” De Palma snapped. “I just watched the DVD of ‘Snake Eyes’ from beginning to end and really liked it--it captured the inner reality of the casino world. And whatever you say about ‘Mission: Impossible,’ it has three or four sequences that will be around for a long time. When it comes to doing a big action movie, I’m as good as anybody.”

OK, so artists are touchy and rarely the best judges of their own work. In fact, distributors often bring films here to gauge critical reaction to them. Most of the time distributors don’t know what critics think about a movie until their reviews run. But at a festival, you can bump into someone who just had dinner with Newsweek’s David Ansen or Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwartzbaum and hear them raving or dissing a new film. A movie that gets good buzz here could be positioned as an Oscar contender, whereas a movie that doesn’t play well could get bumped to a later release date--or not get one at all. Festivals are one place where critics still matter.

Universal Pictures, which is releasing “8 Mile,” the Curtis Hanson movie starring Eminem, showed that movie here as “a work in progress,” largely to assess its Oscar potential without having to worry about any negative published reviews. The verdict from my informal poll: It’s an audience movie, not an academy film.

Miramax also tested the waters with “The Quiet American,” a Phillip Noyce-directed adaptation of the Graham Greene novel about the early days of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Coming into the festival, its producers were concerned that Miramax had lost faith in the film, which had tested poorly in the months after Sept. 11, perhaps because audiences weren’t willing to embrace a movie so openly critical of American military adventurism.

The film’s warm reaction here may force Miramax’s hand. Michael Caine, who co-stars as a cynical British foreign correspondent, got a standing ovation when he appeared at a festival screening, and the film received glowing reviews, with Variety critic Todd McCarthy chastising Miramax for not giving the film a release date. A studio spokesperson now says Miramax, reacting to the positive response here, will release the film this year in time to qualify for Oscar consideration.

De Palma’s “Femme Fatale” also got some positive reactions, providing hope that critics might view it as a comeback for the director. In fact, the film grew out of De Palma’s realization that he needed fresh inspiration. He moved to Paris 2 1/2 years ago, inspired in part by how one of his favorite writers, Somerset Maugham, in his later years began cruising around the world in search of new story ideas.

“You have to get out into the world,” he said. “You can’t hide in your big mansion or ride in a limo to fancy restaurants. You have to want to experience new things.”

De Palma had always wanted to make a movie about a film noir-style woman, like Rita Hayworth in “Gilda” or Jane Greer in “Out of the Past,” who’s involved in a heist gone bad. When De Palma’s femme fatale meets a woman who’s practically her look-alike--and suicidal over the loss of her husband and child--she realizes she could steal more than diamonds. She could steal somebody else’s life. De Palma initially wrote two versions of the story, one set in America, the other set largely in Paris. “When I got financing for the French version, I thought, ‘Great, now I can stay in Paris even longer.’ ”

Like most of De Palma’s films, “Femme Fatale” is full of Hitchcockian hommages, especially to “Vertigo,” De Palma’s favorite Hitchcock film. De Palma is keenly aware that the old master made his best films as a younger man. “You have to think very carefully about what movies you make at my age,” De Palma admits. “But I have nothing left to prove. I’m not going to redeem myself in anyone’s eyes by what I do now. I can almost write the reviews for ‘Femme Fatale’ myself. I can hear the critics saying, ‘Is De Palma lost in all his old obsessions again?’ But if you didn’t like ‘Mission: Impossible’ or ‘Snake Eyes,’ then all I can say is, c’est la vie.”

De Palma’s time in Paris has paid off: He may not have learned to love his critics, but at least he can write them off in French.

“The Big Picture” runs every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes .com.