Review of Passion (2013) by Tara M — 12 Dec 2014

Where to begin with "Passion." It's an unduly stylish thriller, a return to form for the Master of the Macabre, Brian De Palma, but it's also astonishingly ludicrous, concocting a plot so giddy in its plot twists that there comes a point in which we want the plot twists to stop. How many endings can a movie have?

It's hard to put De Palma on blast because he is a hugely influential filmmaker, a man who was lightyears ahead of his time in both camerawork and envelope pushing. "Sisters," "Blow Out," and "Dressed to Kill" are some of the most ingenious, underrated thrillers of all-time, yet they are thrown under the bus because they have brash aesthetics that lean towards the silly. But "Passion," a remake of 2010's classy "Love Crime," is a mixed bag, carrying plenty of astonishingly shot sequences that are outdone by flat dialogue and a tendency to overdo it in terms of attempting to pull the rug out from under us.

The film focuses on the love-hate and finally hate relationship between Christine (Rachel McAdams), a corporate hotshot, and Isabelle (Noomi Rapace), her protege. In their first few months of working together, they get along famously; Christine takes Isabelle under her wing, showing her the ins-and-outs of the business world while remaining to be a friend in the process.

But when Isabelle begins having an affair with Christine's boyfriend, the perpetually drunken Dirk (Paul Anderson), that easygoing rapport is split in half. Christine decides the only way to make things right is to sabotage Isabelle's professional life, stealing her ideas and humiliating her in important business meetings. It takes a huge toll on Isabelle - she nearly suffers a nervous breakdown - but when (spoiler alert) Christine is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect.

In the ideology of "Passion," every attractive woman leads a double life as a lesbian, every powerful individual is into hardcore S&M, and every person is in the mood for some hard-boiled blackmailing at a consistent rate. These can hardly be considered flaws - no one does sleazy quite like De Palma - but the story itself is so thin that the characters seem to exist only as plot-devices, cutouts. McAdams is the ice cold blonde, Rapace is the sensitive do-gooder who crumbles under mounting pressure, Anderson is the too-stupid-for-his-own-good boyfriend who gets caught in the middle of a bad situation, and Karoline Herfurth, who is given nothing to do besides serve as indirect eye candy, is the character with a hidden agenda that doesn't reveal that hidden agenda until the very end of the film.

There are inspired moments (particularly the cinematography used throughout Isabelle's entire "breakdown" sequence, bathing in the shadows left by window shades and lighting itself in a steely blue that evokes mood rather than naturalism), but in 2014, De Palma's split-screens and bothersome music choices feel dated rather than new. But this seems to be his "Topaz"; he most likely has his own "Frenzy"s and "Family Plot"s waiting in the wings. One can only hope.