Brian De Palma has something new to show at the Toronto film festival this year, right on time for the inevitable glut of sexually tense films with kinky undertones, in Passion.
The offices of a prominent multinational corporation is the setting for this story of a power struggle between two contemporary women. Isabelle has unlimited admiration for her direct superior, Christine, a woman well-schooled in the ways of power. Christine enjoys holding sway over Isabelle, leads her one step at a time and ever more deeply into a game of seduction and manipulation, of dominance and servitude. The game is played for keeps, and there is no turning back.
A remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime, the new movie sees Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams taking over the roles played there by Ludivine Sagnier and Kristin Scott Thomas. McAdams is Christine, the sexy, powerful boss of Isabelle (Rapace). There is simmering tension between them, which boils over into lust and then the need for revenge when Christine steals one of Isabelle’s ideas.
Sounds like De Palma territory so far, something that he has explored in the past with movies such as Dressed to kill and Femme Fatale. But is this remake from the veteran director a potential classic or an erotic bomber? We’ll only find out next year for sure, although the film will have a showing at the Toronto Film Festival soon.
And yes, that mask does give me the heebie-jeebies, because I’m certain that I’ve seen it before, somewhere…
Last Updated: August 24, 2012
Flameboy
August 24, 2012 at 14:17
The trailer isn’t showing up for me?
Kervyn Cloete
August 24, 2012 at 14:47
Should be fixed now.