Passion (2012)

Christine: "You are truly mysterious."

By Brian De Palma
With Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace and Karoline Herfurth

Admittedly I didn't remember what this film was about when I started to watch it -- but knew it starred the charismatic Rachel McAdams.

To start off, this is a dense film. It doesn't seem so when you start watching it, but it's a film worth paying attention to because every single detail is relevant: be it the music, colors, costumes, or dialogue. What starts off as a power struggle between two executives of an advertising company ends in a catastrophe, but not without plenty of foreshadowing and motive which implicates every main character in question.

I enjoyed the colors and their symbolism. The red, blue, and green -- the primary colors -- and of course shades of white and black. In a sense it seemed to me that it showed how every character could, to use a cliched phrase, "turn their colors" any minute. As the film starts, Isabelle is shown as a naive woman with a high pitched voice, who is seduced by Christine, a powerful femme fatale who has her under a thrall. At the same time, Isabelle is admired by Dani, her assistant, though she is seemingly unaware of this.

In many ways I think this is more of a symbolic film than one narrating factual events, and as the stakes grow higher and higher, the symbols become more jumbled, intricate, and intense.

Was anyone murdered? Did Christine really have a twin sister? Was there really a ballet playing and if so why did the woman in the ballet have such a strange all-knowing glimmer in her eyes? Moreover, is anyone really innocent at all? The justice system is shown here as more and more a farce, something to be played. At times it reminded me of Franz Kafka's The Trial, the work situation and rivalry taking on a sort of meaningless role, an endless play of words.

I liked: The ambiguity was stellar. It questions the standard whodunit as there is no clear cut answer to be found, and every interpretation can be played out fairly. The music fit very well with the scenes, and stylistically I would say this film was a success.

I disliked: I found at times the characters were too much symbols -- but of course this can be because they each take turns wearing a symbolic mask, and acting a role. Everything is a performance. This is highlighted the most when the same scene is shot twice (which happened a few times) but most memorable when one scene was shown with desperation and seen in another light as something humorous.

70/100
I would recommend this film to you if you're watching it with someone and can pick it apart with another point of view. It might be frustrating to see it and have multitudes of hypothesis running around in your head without a way to understand them. A very visually pleasing film, with a rather delicious plot to mull over afterwards.