FILM COMMENT: "PRECISE IN ITS AESTHETICS, AN EXCELLENT LATE-PERIOD WORK"
Brian De Palma's Passion is available starting today on iTunes and VOD. It will hit theaters on August 30th. Film Comment's Violet Lucca writes of the film, "Precise in its aesthetics, it's an excellent late-period work that shows, without being over-bearing, how the ascent of the corporate ladder can sometimes be a descent into a deeper circle of hell." In the opening paragraph of her review, Lucca states, "I’ve never been convinced that Brian De Palma’s baroque displays of violence against women are a useful way of commenting upon misogyny—but all the same there’s something perceptive and accurate about the female vivisections in Passion. Embedded in a characteristically convoluted narrative replete with absurd twists that toy with audience expectations, said acts are no less gruesome than usual for a De Palma film, but they’re carried out by icy, corporate schemers who repurpose and manipulate feminist ideals for personal gain without batting their eyelashes."
Meanwhile, in a brief review, Noel Murray at the Los Angeles Times states, "Costars Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace start out a little stiff in Passion, and the film as a whole is so flat in its first third that it almost seems as if De Palma is baiting the audience. But then the man who made Dressed to Kill and Body Double shows up, throwing in split screens, over-the-top music cues and an ending that's hysterically nonsensical. All in all, this is De Palma's most playful, enjoyable movie since Femme Fatale."