For my A2 media investigation i have to interview a number of people on what they think of women in the film noir genre. Do you think that the femme fatale character is a celebration for the independent woman image/ another example of women experiencing repression?

If you are referring to the original film noirs of the 40's and 50's, then they have to represent the repression (or more ideologically, re-repression) of women. Feminists (Kaplan etc) celebrated film noirs because they were quite unique in the way that they gave leading and central roles to 'independent' women, though they would never describe them as 'feminist films' because the closure of their narratives would always see the 'femme fatale' punished in some way (including death) or restored as good objects in the patriarchal order (back in the kitchen and looking after the kids). However, Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953) reverses the ideological roles between the genders to quite a degree, and could be described as feminist. Read E. Anne Kaplan's 'Women in Film Noir'.