Review: Passion

Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace play a couple of top advertising execs, with McAdams the more senior and cutthroat of the two. Fond of taking credit for Rapace’s ideas, McAdams fucks with her head, manipulating, seducing, and dominating her. When McAdams learns that Rapace is sleeping with one of her boytoys, McAdams then turns to cruelly humiliating her. Karoline Herfurth plays Rapace’s clearly love-struck, dedicated assistant.

This 2012 remake of the 2010 French film “Love Crime” is really just writer-director Brian De Palma (“The Untouchables”, “Body Double”, “Dressed to Kill”, “Blow Out”) doing what Brian De Palma far too often does, with his obsession over Hitchcock, unnecessary split-screen, and doppelgangers/twin sisters. At least “Femme Fatale” gave us some great lesbionics before sinking down the rabbit hole, this one gives us a couple of passion-less pecks, a terrible Pino Donaggio (“Don’t Look Now”, “Blow Out”, “Body Double”, “Raising Cain”) score, and a central premise straight out of the late 1980s. Corporate power games and back-stabbing? Ooh, how fresh. Are we sure “Love Crime” came out in 2010 and not 1987? Because this is some seriously outdated shit right here. I mean, at the very latest it should’ve been made 20 years ago, starred Sharon Stone and Jeanne Tripplehorn and been directed by Brian De Palma…oh wait (Yeah, I should’ve said Paul Verhoeven, but this version of the joke is much funnier I think. No?).

 

Apparently Mr. De Palma has discovered web cams, video cameras, and video conferencing. Good for you, Brian, you old fart, but the rest of us moved on like 5-10 years ago, dude. It’s no wonder the film bombed, and I continue to question De Palma’s high esteem with many viewers. I love “The Untouchables” and have enjoyed a few others (“Sisters”, “Blow Out”, “Carrie”), but this guy has come out with some absolute turds (“Bonfire of the Vanities”, anyone? “Raising Cain”? “Body Double”? “The Black Dahlia”?) and a whole lot of mediocre films like this one and “Femme Fatale”.

 

I like all three of the main actresses in this film, but the only one to really engage one’s interest- hell, one of the only interesting things in the film- is Rachel McAdams. I found her way too sweet to be convincing as the head bitch in “Mean Girls”, but she seems to have worked out how to pull it off here. It’s not a great performance in the slightest, but she’s fine in the part, and certainly beautiful. She gives De Palma’s script far more than it is worth, and is the whole show here. Noomi Rapace (who can be effective in the right role), however is pretty badly miscast. She’s somewhat believable as a woman who may not be in her right mind, but as a naïve and mousy woman who is easily manipulated? Hardly. She seems too hard-edged to me to convince in a role like this. She gets better the more unbalanced her character appears to be. Karoline Herfurth was excellent in “We Are The Night”, and is very credible here, but her role isn’t terribly interesting or large. I think she would’ve been better casting in the Rapace role, for sure.

 

The other thing I liked about the film is that, although completely pretentious and artificial, the film is undeniably visually striking and colourful throughout. The faux-Technicolour visual design applied by De Palma and his cinematographer José Luis Alcaine (Almodovar’s excellent “The Skin I Live In”) is much closer to genuine Technicolour than what was achieved in “Far From Heaven”. It looks stunning. But a stunning look cannot hide how stale this subject matter is, and not just because it’s a remake. And De Palma is ripping of Hitchcock again, especially “Dial M for Murder” and “Vertigo” (McAdams wears “Vertigo” green shoes and there’s a spiral staircase for cryin’ out loud!), but the script here is much, much sillier, especially when the law comes into it. The police investigation is especially hilarious, and I don’t think it’s intentional. Donaggio’s music score is embarrassingly inappropriate, reminding one of the jaunty “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” theme. Although De Palma claims some parts are supposedly funny, this ain’t a jaunty little comic mystery, and the score clashes wildly with the action on screen. If De Palma had played up the sex angle, at least we’d get some kind of trashy sex appeal, ala “Basic Instinct”, but there’s zero chemistry between the leads, hell there’s not even any steam…including from McAdams’ shower scene. No nudity there of course, ‘coz if you’re gonna film Rachel McAdams in the shower you probably wouldn’t want to see her beautiful naked body, would you? Especially not in an erotic thriller! (The dreaded no-nudity clause strikes again!).

 

I also have to take issue with the ending. I think I know what De Palma was going for on reflection (especially given it’s the type of ending he’s gone for a few times before), but he has botched it to the point where I wasn’t even sure if I picked the twist or not, because of the confusing manner in which the final two or three scenes are shot.

 

It’s not De Palma’s worst film (And it’s certainly better than the previous “The Black Dahlia”), hell it’s more mediocre than bad (or at least the best-looking bad movie of its year), but there’s really not much reason to bother with this film. It’s at least a decade out of touch, probably more, and a bit of an eye-roller, really. Re-watch “Bound” instead, if you want a well-made, sexy Sapphic thriller.

 

Rating: C