"SHE KISSES HER, AND NOOMI'S LIKE, 'WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?'"
A few days ago I linked to an Ain't It Cool News post from 2013, in which Mr. Beaks interviews Brian De Palma upon the release of Passion. Worth noting again, now that we're a dozen years on from the flood of interviews around that time, is this passage from the interview, about the ways that Rachael McAdams, Noomi Rapace, and Paul Anderson played with and improvised some of the more outrageous elements of the film:
Beaks: Getting back to PASSION, and the power struggle dynamic between Noomi and Rachel, there's that great kissing scene that Rachel turns back on Noomi. Was that scripted?
De Palma: Absolutely not. The girls did it on the day. When Noomi grabs her and gives her the kiss of death, and Rachel kisses her back leering at Noomi's assistant in the doorway... (Laughs) I would just sit behind the camera and smile. "My god, these girls are really doing it!" They did a lot of stuff like that. The way she's playing with her in the car. "I want to be admired! I want to be loved!" She kisses her, and Noomi's like, "What the hell is going on here?" And Rachel picks up the lipstick and says, "You need a little color." (Laughs) It's hilarious!
Beaks: It's very kinky, and it's very much of a piece with your other erotic thrillers. By the way, how do you feel about being the "master of the erotic thriller"?
De Palma: Well, I don't think we can be that erotic anymore on the screen. We can't compete with cable. It's kind of amazing. We can't do the kind of nudity they do on cable. I don't know what's comparable to an X these days, but you'd get in a lot of trouble doing that stuff they do on cable on the big screen. Eroticism and pornography have sort of gone to cable television and the web, and I don't know if you can do much of it in movies anymore. You can only be very suggestive. But this is a movie about women for women basically, and you don't have to get too explicit. That scene where the guy uses the camera to videotape their making out in the hotel room, I basically just gave them a camera and said, "Just do whatever you would do." (Laughs) Believe me, they did some incredible things.
