Brian DePalma's "Passion" opens on the vulgar lid of an Apple computer. We then pulls back to reveal the equally vulgar Christine (Rachel McAdams) and Isabelle (Noomi Rapace). Christine, made up to resemble Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock's "Marnie", is an advertising executive. Isabelle's her assistant. In traditional DePalma fashion, both work with and sell images. They're seated in an antiseptic living room – corporate minimalism meets IKEA chic – every corner white, bland and soulless. The film's title, "Passion", then appears before dispassionate furniture, behind which are paintings, each with nymphets fawning over a third character. After complimenting each other on their "excellent taste", Christine and Isabelle spit out "organic wine" in disgust. To these two, nothing tastes better than plastic.
Enter Dirk (Paul Anderson), Christine's lover. Narcissistic, Christine forces Dirk to wear a mask of her own face whilst having sex. Later it becomes apparent that Christine has sexual relationships with an army of men, all submissive, some wearing dog collars and masks. "I'm tired of being admired," she admits, "now I need love!" The act of watching and admiring is itself the basis of an advertisement Christine and Isabelle are working on. With customary DePalma self-reflexivity, this advertisement involves a camera eye watching as spectators watch and admire it. Equally salacious is the name of Christine's company: Koch Image. Kinky.
Several "love" triangles develop. Christine wants Isabelle, her assistant, as does Dani (Karoline Herfurth), Isabelle's assistant. Bouncing between them is Dirk, everyone's plaything. These jealousies lead to a game of escalating savagery which, new for DePalma, unfolds amidst an environment of glittering fetish objects, the totems of a material and ego-driven culture. The film itself is based on Alain Corneau's "Love Crime", but DePalma's changed Corneau's central relationship. Corneau's plot hinged on a simple mother/daughter, old/young, dominant/submissive relationship. DePalma, however, paints Isabelle and Christine as equals, sisters, doubles, lovers, both the same age and both equally competent, intellectually and professionally.
This being DePalma, "Passion" is obsessed with eyes, cameras and voyeurs. Isabelle and Christine battle over ownership of a camera-phone advertisement, it's a sex tape recorded with a camera-phone which leads to Isabelle's plot to kill Christine and it's a camera-phone which will later incriminate her. Each act, then, hinges on the ownership of a camera, and the power that comes from being either watcher or the watched.
"Passion" is condemned for a last act dream sequence in which Dani is murdered, but the "dreams" start much earlier, possibly as early as "Passion's" first act. At the very latest, things break down roughly forty minutes into the film when, at 11:49, Isabelle overdoses on pills after being publicly humiliated (by CCTV footage). What follows is a series of sequences in which Isabelle kills, or fantasises about killing, Christine. She then wakes up at 12:49 and is sent to a jail cell. When she wakes up she's still in her bedroom, however, and its 11:49. She then goes back to sleep, at which point she's once again in prison. Moments later, it's 11:04. In other words, Dani's murder isn't the only murder which "doesn't necessarily occur".
DePalma's films have always "obeyed" dream logic OUTSIDE their overt dream sequences. Here we have repeated references to the myth of Medusa and "The Afternoon of a Faun", a poem by Stephane Mallarme about a faun who wakes up from his afternoon sleep and fantasises, whilst awake, about several nymphs who are "tinted by passion". This nebulous, dreamlike poem takes the reader through different levels of consciousness, until the lines between reality, dream, and memory become indistinguishable. The ballet (and Claude Debussy orchestral) of this poem occurs during DePalma's film (during Christine's "murder", no less), and portrays a man awaking from sleep and watching a nymph who in turn becomes aware of a watcher who is about to slay her.
This symbolic slaying within the ballet then becomes Isabelle's "decapitation" of Christine outside of the ballet, one of several of DePalma's references to the Medusa myth (a literal Medusa appears in Isabelle's cell). In this myth, Medusa, one of three sisters, is decapitated to protect and free a woman named Danae. The character of Dani, incidentally, does not appear in Corneau's film, and is entirely an invention of DePalma's. Other symbolic moments abound: the black screen before the ballet becomes the screen hiding the watcher of Christine's murder, women's shoes reappear, a police detective "forgets to apologise" after Isabelle insists that he "wont stop apologising", a phone which will "incriminate" is hidden where a scarf "which will prove innocence" was hidden etc etc.
DePalma's films often find women abused by the foot-soldiers of patriarchy. Ignoring "Carrie", "Passion" is the only DePalma flick to dwell on woman on woman violence. Significantly, both "Carrie" and Hitchcock's "Marnie" feature a daughter who wants to break free of a mother. "Passion" charts a similar course, with each of its three females at different points embodying the maternal role. The split screens in "Carrie", which occurred when our hero undergoes a kind of inter-subjective split (and social split), occurs again in "Passion", DePalma's screen splitting at the precise moment Isabelle is "split" into both good girl and bad, one a doe-eyed observer, the other an active killer.
"Passion" finds DePalma re-teaming with composer Pino Donaggio. Donaggio offers one good song here ("Perversions and Diversions", evocative of "Body Double's" "Telescope"), but it's woefully underused by DePalma. The film opens with a reversal of "Femme Fatale's" (another film with dreams signalled by clocks) opening and ends with a repeat of "Raising Caine's" climax, itself lifted from Argento's "Tenebrae".
8/10 - Burnt by the reception to two of his best films ("Dahlia" and "Redacted"), "Passion" finds DePalma returning to familiar, less ambitious territory. See Olivier Assayas' "Demonlover". Worth two viewings.
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