A bit of B-noir, a lot of high trash, a smattering of lesbian smooching _ oh, and the belated arrival of several Hitchcockian flourishes _ don't succeed in luring us into the booby trap that is Brian De Palma's latest.
Passion Starring Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace and Paul Anderson. Directed by Brian De Palma. At Lido.
Passion, adapted from Crime d'Amour, the 2010 French film by Alain Corneau, needs a lot more lubricant to grease the tale of a manipulative boss at an ad agency and her confused but cunning assistant. Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace star in this homicidal workplace thriller full of shadows and twists, though it's not until the final 20 minutes that things begin to pick up.
With precious little high jinks, plus depictions of sex that aren't sufficiently kinky to fire up the lurid whodunnit we were promised, Passion feels dispassionate at best. We get not one but three femmes fatales (speaking of which: Femme Fatale, that De Palma film from 2002, was a lot more satisfying).
McAdams plays the bitchy blonde, Christine, but seems to be trying too hard to transmit menace and duplicitous charm before ending up as a rather derivative imitation of so many noir maidens before her. Rapace, in great contrast to her Girl With The Dragon Tattoo persona, initially comes across as studious, earnest and slightly nerdy, despite allowing herself to be filmed in action by Christine's sleazy boyfriend, Dirk, with whom she's having an affair. Then, of course, as things get hot, she gets nasty, along with her secretary, played with sensational relish by German star Karoline Herfurth.
There are too many nooks and crannies in this plot which progresses inexorably towards a murder and De Palma trudges through them with his trademark attachment to B-movie kitsch, complete with ghostly close-ups, overacting that's practically flaunted and increasingly shadowy, crooked shots of the interior of a high-rise office in Berlin (where everyone speaks English, strangely). This trashy agenda could have a certain appeal if it were executed with wry humour or nightmarish obsessiveness _ as in, say, De Palma's Dressed To Kill _ but this time around the whole thing feels so vapid, so dated. The three actresses seem uncomfortable in their own skin, and this hybrid of murder mystery and backstabbing corporate drama leaves us craving more, expecting the director to have a few more dirty tricks tucked up his sleeve.
