Passion

With “Passion”, De Palma puts his own twist on the latest incarnation of the thriller: the corporate thriller set against our 21st Century enthrallment with money, power, image and control. But this deadly corporate battle unfolds between two beautiful, complicated, ambitious women who have taken the gloves off and become as aggressive and merciless as any of their male higher-ups in the boy’s club. The film is De Palma’s remake of the late French filmmaker Alain Corneau’s final thriller, “Crime D’Amour”, which was celebrated in Europe both as a compelling mystery and a darkly comical satire of corporate amorality. The film particularly stood out as a rare battle between two strong, even fearsome, female leads. “I was drawn to the story because it is a thriller, which to me is the best genre for visual storytelling, and I also felt it had that certain element of fun to it”.

“In the original movie, Alain Corneau tiptoed around the sexual attraction between the characters. But Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams played it straight out. I did not say to them ‘kiss each other and be erotic.’ They just did it. And it was quite effective,” he says, adding “Noomi and Rachel had already worked together on Sherlock Holmes and knew each other well enough that they were able to leave the comfort zone and venture into more dangerous territory. They were unafraid to go anywhere with each other, which makes their duet very dynamic and compelling to watch.” To De Palma, Rachel McAdams had all the shadings needed to make Christine at once compellingly attractive, obsessively ambitious and capable of the most malevolent backstabbing. “Rachel is very sexy and she had great fun playing a very evil woman,” says De Palma. “Actresses don’t always like to play manipulative women like Christine, but Rachel went all out for it.” The director was further drawn to Noomi Rapace’s ability to go to unsettling places. “Noomi can be very scary as Isabelle because you don’t really know what is going on her head and you believe she is capable of killing somebody,” he remarks. For Rapace, the intrigue of the role lay in taking Isabelle further and further into the swirling morass of her ambition. She was especially drawn to the setting in an international ad agency devoted to the glossy imagery that fuels 24-7 consumer desire around the globe. “What’s interesting is that these characters are trapped in the world of advertising and commercials. It’s one of those worlds where you always need to be on top of your game and one step ahead in your ideas,” she notes.

I was very intrigued by the relationship between my character and that of Rachel McAdams. They are very complex and desperate women, with a whole set of admiration, seduction and hatred. I felt like I was in a minefield, you never know when it’s going to explode. It was a very difficult shoot, psychologically. I did a lot of research on psychopaths and met a professor who specializes in the subject. I was playing a woman with a sociopathic disorder, which means she has no empathy. It was a different way of working. (Noomi Rapace, Allocine, December 20, 2021)

The early anticipation for the “new De Palma” was unfortunately cooled down after the film’s world-premiere at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, where critics were rather dismissive towards the film and De Palma’s style, especially in comparison to the celebrated original film. “Remaking Alain Corneau’s 2010 French noir Love Crime proves less a comeback for De Palma and more what economists call a “dead cat bounce”, wrote the Hollywood Reporter after the Venice premiere, while ScreenDaily wrote, that “the erotic thriller turns limp in Brian de Palma’s latest take on the genre, where even the sexual decadence is of the clichéd lace and carnival-mask variety, and the high-profile casting of Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace in the two main roles works a lot better on paper than it does in practice. Returning to the territory of Dressed To Kill and Body Double, the veteran US director finds surprisingly little to add to his source material.” “Passion” was released in European countries in 2013 to equally mixed reviews and received a theatrical release and VOD release in the USA in Augut 2013.

In a revised edition of the book “Brian De Palma”, by Samuel Blumenfeld and Laurent Vachaud, the director remembered the “disastrous experience” of working with Noomi Rapace. As he told the French publication Le Point, “She refused to play certain scenes the way I asked her. In general, when I deal with this kind of reluctance, I shoot two versions, one in my own way and another in the actor’s way. But there she obstinately refused to follow my instructions. I had to constantly be extra cunning to achieve my goals. I will never work with her again and I pity the next director who will hire her.” Rapace, in a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly, chose her words more wisely. “He’s more old-school, so sometimes we clashed. It was an interesting, turbulent journey.”