If you ever fancied a film that combines the female rivalry of The Devil Wears Prada with the OTT antics of Showgirls, then Brian De Palma’s Passion is just the ticket…
THE STORY While working on a lucrative jeans campaign in Berlin, the rivalry between manipulative American advertising executive Christine (Rachel McAdams) and her talented assistant Isabelle (Noomi Rapace) escalates from stealing credit to public humiliation to revenge and finally murder…
THE LOWDOWNPassion is Eurotrash of the highest order from director Brian De Palma, who returns to his Hitchcock-inspired roots with this French-German co-production based on a 2010 French thriller that somehow gets lost in translation. Imagine The Devil Wears Prada meets Showgirls.
But De Palma’s erotic thriller remake of Alain Corneau's Crime d'amour isn’t all that bad, thanks to the film’s old-school thriller vibe that evokes the director’s earlier screen classics like Sisters, Carrie and - especially - Dressed to Kill.
Passion combines office rivalry, eroticism and murder into a riveting, if schlocky, cinematic experience. There’s the OTT performances of Rapace and McAdams as the backstabbing beautifully-attired bisexual ad execs to savour, De Palma’s trademark split-screen effect that's employed for the film’s big murder set-piece, Pino Donaggio's suitably Hitchcockian soundtrack (listen here), and its all shot inside stylishly-appointed offices decked out in post-modern contemporary art. In fact, the total effect is not akin to an overblown ad for a design magazine - with some bloodied stilettos thrown in, of course. Well worth watching at least twice - if only to work out the perplexing final scene.
Passion is released in the UK on DVD on 12 August 2013 from Metrodome Distribution http://youtube.com/v/2ZUslSGLY6k
