Passion

Brian De Palma returns with a remake of a 2010 french thriller, Crime d'amour (Love Crime), now renamed Passion. It stars Rachel McAdams and everyone's newest favorite actress, Noomi Rapace, who we all feel in-love with for being the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. They are work colleagues and we witness the beginning of what becomes a rivalry between them that spirals out of control until one of them is left dead.

The opening scene makes you wonder if you've just found yourself watching an improvised video that will eventually lead to a softcore pornographic lesbian sex scene between the two actresses. If this doesn't make you want to watch it, you'll be more likely to enjoy where the story actually does go. Rachel McAdams is who Rachel McAdams is in half of the other movies she is in, like a grown-up version of her role in Mean Girls. Noomi Rapace's performance gets better with each scene. Two great actresses, but we already know that.

The story is a throwback to the 1970's when directors were all trying to imitate the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. Brian De Palma is quite a high profile director himself, often put up on a pedestal with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. He can be innovate but sometimes we can go a little too far with experimental framing and different editing techniques. How much does it enhance the story to use split screens in the scenes that he does? Sister and Phantom of the Paradise put him in his place but he peeked with such classics as Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables and Carlito's Way. With Mission Impossible he had hit the top of his career, as far as success. His next film, Snake Eyes, would be torn apart by critics and Mission to Mars was unforgivably bad by everyone's standards. And though he is trying, he is unable to tap into what it was that originally made him such an exiting director to look out for through the 70's and into the 90's.

Passion is a fun, twisted little story that is told without any real passion. A low-budget we can look past, this just feels cheap.

I had grown disappointed with Brian DePalma throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The man who gave us "Phantom of the Paradise", "Carrie", "Dressed to Kill", "Scarface" and "Carlito's Way"* suddenly turned to overblown stuff like "Mission: Impossible", "Snake Eyes" and "The Black Dahlia". So it's a little bit of a treat to see "Passion". It's not as good as his early work, but the tension between the main characters is definitely what I hope for in one of his movies. In fact, DePalma tricks the audience by getting them to think that it's a clash-of-egos story...before the real plot line sets in. Far from her perky roles in previous movies, Rachel McAdams plays a scary executive. The viewer practically wishes for Noomi Rapace's character to do something nasty.

Basically, "Passion" has a hint of what usually made DePalma's movies good. It's probably not going to be for everyone, but I liked it.

*For the record, I didn't think that "Bonfire of the Vanities" was that bad.

Hard to believe Brian dePalma has sunk this low. The film is boring, dreadfully scripted, and looks like a long perfume commercial. Real people just don't dress and look like this; DePalma seemed to be heading toward this stylized, air-brushed Playboy magazine look when he made "Dressed to Kill," and it's gotten progressively worse with each film, except "The Untouchables." "Passion's" script starts out to be about two female executives vying for the same account, and then goes off in five different directions. He toys with gratuitous lesbianism in some segments, which might have been bold and sexy in the 70's and 80's, but now just comes off looking dated and embarrassing. The film's 100 minutes could easily have been pared down to 20 and it would have been more interesting and less ponderous. A real disappointment.

Saw this one at the Toronto International Film Festival, it's a cross between a late night made for cable movie and a European art film. The cinematography is great, lots of inventive shots. Actually, nearly every shot is a winner. The musical score can

Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace ham it up as back stabbing mind f*cking executives. They have great chemistry and as the plot twists along we are never quite sure who to root for. Rachel McAdams' Christine basically plays a grown up version of Regina George from Mean Girls.

None of it is meant to be taken too seriously. The Anyone who liked Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction or De Palma's own Dressed to Kill will be into this movie.

"Passion" was not as good as the original "Love Crime" movie. The story was the same but "Passion" added some surrealistic touches that really made no sense. The original "Love Crime" starred Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier playing the roles that Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace reenacted in "Passion". Ms. Thomas was believable as a glamorous cut-throat executive where Rachel McAdams seemed like a high school mean girl in comparison. Noomi Rapace was decent playing the Ludivine Sagnier role, in fact maybe a bit more believable, though not as much of a babe. I never got into the story that Rachel McAdams was anything but a catty girl, not some powerful executive. Maybe it was because the age difference between the executive and the assistant was greater in "Love Crime". Much of the dialog in "Passion" was stilted and flat. The story by itself was powerful but the telling of it in "Passion" seemed so amateurish, as if there was no confidence that the story could hold the audience's attention so other aspects had to be added to improve it. Those added touches made no sense and the ending was just confusing. "Love Crimes" told the story straight out and the performances held it together. I wanted so much to like "Passion" and in the end I was disappointed. "Love Crime" was a far superior movie. I rate "Passion" a 5; "Love Crime" an 8.