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 And though he is trying, he is unable to tap into what it was that originally made him such an exiting director to look out for through the 70's and into the 90's.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.
