PASSION (Brian De Palma). 102 minutes. Opens Friday (September 13). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NN
After the nervy and original experiment of Redacted, Brian De Palma retreats to safer, sillier ground with this overheated erotic thriller.
Luridly adapted from Alain Corneau’s 2010 thriller Crime D’Amour, Passion casts Rachel McAdams as Christine, a sharkish marketing executive, and Noomi Rapace as her far more talented underling, Isabelle.
When Christine steals her clever new idea for a smartphone campaign, Isabelle pushes back, triggering an escalating war of upstaging and humiliation that eventually leads to murder – while allowing De Palma to indulge his habit of lifting key images and musical elements from half a dozen filmmakers, including himself.
McAdams and Rapace – who co-starred in Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, though they shared no scenes – aren’t the most convincing of rivals. Corneau put together a much more convincing power dynamic in Crime D’Amour with Kristin Scott Thomas dominating Ludivine Sagnier. Here, Rapace looks like she could put McAdams through a wall without breaking a sweat.
But De Palma doesn’t care about that stuff he’s in it for the chance to orchestrate elaborate camera moves and editorial flourishes straight out of a 1970s giallo. The plot and his actors are the last thing on his mind.
At TIFF last year, De Palma loyalists defended Passion as a return to form. I assume that was just out of habit.
