Short Review: Love Crime is okay; Passion sucks donkey balls. If you must see one, see Love Crime. But trust me, you’re not missing much if you see neither of them.

Masochistic Review: I went to see Brian DePalma’s Passion because it starred Rachel McAdams, who is generally a good thing in movies, and Noomi Rapace, who I seem to want to believe is a good thing in movies. The film wound up being so God-awful, and the prospect of reviewing it was so dreary and uninspiring that I decided the only way to make it palatable was to rent the French film of which it’s a remake – Crime d’amour (2010) – and try to figure out what the hell DePalma thought he was doing. Now that I have the ignominy of having in a span of 24 hours watched two different versions of this same questionable story, I can at least comment on their respective merits.

Love Crime is not a terrible film. But it’s not a good film either. Its story idea is okay – an exploration of female competitiveness in the corporate world between a rising star and her middle-aged mentor, competitiveness that crosses a line and turns violent. Its story execution is really mixed. On the plus side, it’s well-cast – Ludivine Sagnier and the always-wonderful Kristen Scott Thomas have a good physical chemistry, and the two supporting guys are very solid and effective in their roles. Also on the plus side is the minimal but decent dialog between characters (it does not add much depth, but it is well-judged to bring a modicum of realism to the somewhat far-fetched story,) and the fairly solid background structure of the film (the corporation is an effectively vague agribusiness outfit, of which details are kept minimal yet weaved into the story as needed.) On the negative side, the whole elaborate murder scheme is not adequately set up (in particular, Sagnier’s motivation is not believable,) and it’s overly long, drawn-out and surprisingly dull. Even the ending is rather drab.

So what did Brian DePalma choose to do with this base? He throws away the compelling middle-aged-mentor/rising-star relationship and replaces it with what can only be described as an empowered-bitch/retarded-pet relationship, between two women of the same age. Rachel McAdams is supposed to be a superstar EVP, but she acts like she’s in Mean Girls the whole time. Noomi Rapace acts and speaks like Lisbeth Salander the whole time! Clearly, something went terribly wrong in the direction of this film.

He then throws away the basically sound setting of Love Crime and replaces it with a ridiculous ad agency, basing the ladies’ duel entirely on a dubious video to sell mobile phones in which some chick walks around in tight jeans with the phone’s camera pointed out the back (this, we are assured by DePalma, is a work of advertising “genius.”) He makes the Daniel character a crazy lesbian, and he makes Philippe into a ridiculous and depraved sex-degenerate. He jettisons all the effective dialog from Love Crime, replacing it with pure crap. But he keeps the overly long and drawn-out murder investigation, throwing in a few superficial tricks of the trade to make it seem a little bit more exciting than it actually is. He then adds a silly, almost offensive musical score, designed to suggest that nothing you are viewing should be taken seriously, and he changes the ending into a half-assed homage to the artistic stylings of Melancholia.

But it gets worse! Passion positively reeks of the rotting corpse of the 1980s. DePalma is as bad as Woody Allen in his self-imposed time-warp. Someone needs to tell him: two women kissing each other is no longer “edgy.” Two people fucking in masks is no longer “risqué.” The appearance of a 10″ red strap-on is no longer “daring.” And lesbianism is no longer considered “deviant.” Wake up, Brian! It’s a whole new millennium, man.

Of course, I suppose you could argue that DePalma was trying to take a so-so, somewhat dull French murder movie and turn it into a piece of art, even if it meant making it a parody of itself. That’s fine as far as it goes, but if the result is dog shit, what was the point?