'PASSION' TIPS FROM UHLICH, DAYOUB, MORE
STEPHEN SAITO: "DE PALMA'S MOST GLEEFULLY PLEASURABLE FILM SINCE 'FEMME FATALE'

As Brian De Palma's Passion gets set to make it's USA premiere tonight at the New York Film Festival, here's a quick round-up of some of the reviews coming out of the fest. Time Out New York's Keith Uhlich says De Palma is "in fine form" here, adding that "fans will take to this razor-sharp satire like a knife to a pulsing throat." While the New York Times' A.O. Scott feels that the film "works hard to achieve perversity," Tony Dayoub says it's "a fun, twisty-turvy throwback to his 80s thrillers that has to be seen to be believed." (See Dayoub's full review at Cinema Viewfinder.)

Slant's Ed Gonzalez says Passion is a "return to form" for De Palma. "Passion is a serpentine, gorgeously orchestrated gathering of all of De Palma's pet themes and conceits," Gonzalez writes, "a symphony of giddy terror where people perpetually hide behind masks, both literal and figurative, hallucinations are nested in dreams, and images within images become tools of aggression, all set to a remarkable Pino Donaggio score that's one part Max Steiner, two parts Bernard Herrmann, and at least three parts Phil Collins."

The Moveable Fest's Stephen Saito says Passion is De Palma's "most gleefully pleasurable film" since Femme Fatale, adding that De Palma takes Alain Corneau's Love Crime "and turns it into something decidedly more European." Saito feels that the style of the film's first half is overdone, perhaps as a way to cover up "a skimpy plot," adding that "the film never resembles a recognizable reality."

"Though both leads appear to be game for anything the film has in store for them – the sex toys, the sapphic advances, the Kabuki masks – only McAdams seems to truly be in on the joke," writes Saito, "relishing every every double entendre or double cross to pass through her perfectly affixed ruby red lips. However, Rapace, sans the nosering and the body ink from Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, continues to suggest what was so effective in portraying rebellious posturing once can be frustratingly stiff elsewhere. To some degree, Rapace’s limited range of emotiveness works as cool detachment after she attempts to liberate herself from the hierarchy of her workplace, but it’s only when her character begins to loosen up that the film can too, even as her stare remains frozen.

"Once Passion kicks into its second gear, it’s as if DePalma finds his compass, his peerless sense of geography once again evident in navigating a gnarled plot as it unravels, presented elegantly in the physical spaces where it unfolds. Shamelessly overwrought yet carefully constructed, it’s at once an acknowledgement of the times and the work of a true master."

Reverse Shot's Michael Koresky says that Passion amplifies Corneau's story "into an endless hall of mirrors and cameras, screens within screens, monitors of different shapes and sizes; this does not just create a sense of ever-shifting paranoia but makes Christine and Isabelle less flesh-and-blood characters than refracted and recorded images of themselves—and thus as untrustworthy as facsimiles."

For Koresky, "Passion is light on its feet," despite the self-referential subtext running throughout. "Artificiality is the name of the distinctively De Palma game here," writes Koresky, "from the workplace-as-fashion-catwalk aesthetic to the satisfying archness of the two lead performances. McAdams, who, perhaps because of her wholesome, enormous facial features, is often asked to turn on the good-girl charm, is effectively reprising her bitch shtick from Mean Girls here, and it’s a welcome return. With her little-girl voice and transparent pout, she always seems like a high-schooler playing dress-up, an essential disparity that many will scoff as 'bad casting,' but which ultimately highlights the superficiality and stunted-growth mindset of the milieu: after all, these are sophisticates who have to tap into their inner tween to properly appeal to the public’s craving for stuff, with the American market their ultimate goal (Christine is angling for a New York transfer from her German office). Rapace, who heavily rehearsed her deer-in-headlights look in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, is called upon to radiate blandness, and her plasticky chipmunk facelessness only grows more frighteningly serene as the film progresses to its Grand Guignol final half-hour."

Koresky later describes the cinematography by José Luis Alcaine as "a mixture of blinding-white austerity and seductive panache," adding that "the exquisite-corporate visuals of Passion eloquently provide backdrop for the escalating one-upmanship enacted by these two backstabbers."

Koresky concludes his review with these two paragraphs:

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"If it’s difficult to tell what’s business and what’s personal in the film’s intricate set-up, it’s even harder to separate reality from fantasy as the film slithers along to its boffo third act. Here is where De Palma breaks most drastically from Corneau’s film, plummeting down a rabbit hole of delirium that proves he was just using the original narrative as a basic skeleton to indulge in the ridiculous sublime. Whereas Corneau set his narrative up in a clinical and cold-blooded manner (perfectly acceptable for the sleek austerity of the setting), De Palma plunges into excess, positing the characters’ actions as dreams within dreams, and using nightmarishly canted frames and elegant split-screens to toy with both the audience’s perspective and his characters’ subjectivity (Pino Donaggio’s driving, tango-ish score begins to have an identity crisis of its own, starting to sample bits from Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, foreshadowing a thrillingly staged ballet scene). There’s an audacity to this that elevates it far above matters of style: De Palma is making pliable a rigidly established film that had clear emotional in and out points, reconfiguring its emotional makeup in a way that confuses, or even rejects, easy identification—with both character and reality.

"In a sense, this is the most apt form of remake, digging in with both hands and finding the material’s potential to be something else. Passion might at first appear to be Love Crime’s identical other, but just as Christine might never have actually had the twin sister she claims to have tragically lost in a suspiciously heartfelt monologue, appearances can be deceiving, and the truth can be double-edged. In the final half-hour, Passion barely resembles Love Crime at all, preferring instead to reconfigure the climax of De Palma’s own Dressed to Kill, itself a hyper-stylized, übersexual reimagining of Psycho, into a bizarre, free-associative nightmare. One could read the final segment as a main character’s guilt-stricken fever dream leading straight to hell, or simply as De Palma’s confession that all cinema is remake. Either way, in the movies we’re living on borrowed time."

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The L Magazine's Jesse Hassenger suggests that within De Palma's filmography, Passion completes a "thesis-in-waiting trilogy" with fellow indulgent "one-for-me palate-cleansers" Raising Cain and Femme Fatale. "The NYFF notes unblinkingly refer to Passion as De Palma's 'first fiction feature since Femme Fatale,' such a perverse twist on the word 'fiction' that it almost makes a De Palmian kind of sense," writes Hassenger. "Redacted (2007) is a dramatization of real life events but in no way an actual documentary, while The Black Dahlia (2006) is even further from the non-fiction designation, as a narrative film adopted from a novel based on a true story."

Hassenger continues, "Actually, maybe the NYFF should've outright reversed its play on words; I get the feeling that to De Palma, movies like Passion are non-fiction. But to anyone else, the first 30-40 minutes of Passion will appear stilted (at least in terms of concerns secondary to De Palma like dialogue and behavior), albeit fascinatingly. Rachel McAdams, dressed in a series of weirdly unflattering outfits (high-waisted pants, turtleneck blouses), plays Christine, head of a powerful ad agency, or consulting company, or something; the point is, she's the boss of Isabelle (Noomi Rapace), and they engage in an ongoing friendship-slash-competition, with plenty of flirting-slash-backstabbing. The suspense of the movie has little to do with whether Isabelle will receive credit for her mobile-phone ad idea or which working woman of the world will have revenge; rather, film geeks will reach the edge of their seats wondering when, exactly, De Palma will uncork.

"When he does, it's a feast of fetishized style: the directorial control of the first section gives way to canted angles, noirish blind shadows, POV shots, long takes, and a bravura trick of a split-screen sequence. The movie has plenty of showstoppers in its back half, but one of the most interesting doesn't contain any of the director's signature shocks of violence; the camera just follows Rapace out of her office, into an elevator, to her car in a parking garage, and into a fit of deep frustration and rage. All together, the movie isn't quite as nutty as Cain nor as movie-drunk as Fatale, but it's of their ilk: diabolical, a little deranged. Like De Palma's other palate-cleansers, it's more about its creator than its creations. Plus, there's nothing like seeing a De Palma picture with an audience of film critics; when it sees proper release, it's virtually guaranteed that the non-joke line "you have a twin sister?" will elicit knowing laughter."

TrustMovies' James van Maanen thinks Passion is "a lot of fun -- perhaps even more so for those of us (many, I would wager) who have already seen the earlier version. As a stylist, M. Corneau was quiet in the extreme (Love Crime was all icy blues and greys -- as icy as its leading lady, Kristin Scott Thomas -- particularly its interiors, which were 'corporate' to a fault.) De Palma, as usual, goes so over the top that you can't (and wouldn't want to) take your eyes off the screen. All or many of his signature tropes are here, from that huge staircase seen from above to the sudden, bloody slash of the knife, from fetish objects to twins. Not that he was the first to make use of any of these, but few have used them better."

And it wouldn't be as fun if we didn't include any of the purely negative reviews, right? Quiet Earth's Griffith Maloney says Passion is "a wreck" that "has an absolutely cop out ending." And Flixist's Hubert Vigilla says Passion is "heroically bad," adding that all the film "mustered from me were confused shakes of the head, a couple facepalms, and unintentional laughs. It's like some kind of anti-alchemy. It turns quality actors into histrionic amateurs, eroticism into slapstick." Yet, writes Vigilla, "Here's the weirdest thing: I can't hate a movie like Passion. It's so lovably awful, so bafflingly silly. That's what the movie is more than anything else: silly. It's like a dachshund wearing pearls and four tiny high heels. I had a good time watching it, giggling as the actors vamped to salvage the film. This is less like classic De Palma and more like Tommy Wiseau's homage to Brian De Palma. But you can't hate something like that. De Palma diehards will love this, though. They'll enjoy the excesses, the camp, the oodles of self-reference, the exercises in style. De Palma, at the very least, has succeeded in satisfying them."

NYFF ADDS EXTRA SCREENING OF 'PASSION'
All of the screenings of Brian De Palma's Passion have long been sold out, and there must be crazy demand, because they've just added an extra screening for this Monday, October 1st. Tickets available at the NYFF website. The first NYFF screening happens tonight.

NEW 'PASSION' PICS
COURTESY NY TIMES VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH DE PALMA


The image above of Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams in Brian De Palma's Passion is courtesy of a New York Times video in which De Palma discusses the film. Aside from the image above, the video includes three more new pictures that have not previously been released. In the video, De Palma briefly describes the plot of Passion, and then discusses some of his filmmaking techniques. "I'm kind of a very intensely involved visual director," he says in the video. "I like beautiful people, interesting locations, and I also like the relationship between them. I kind of like the noir look. This is a kind of noirish drama. And plus, noir lighting has always been very interesting to me. I look for the correct shot for the piece of material I'm photographing. If it happens to be a steadicam shot, or a split diopter shot, or use of split screen, or a whole complicated surrealistic montage, these are things I have developed and evolved over the last 50 years of filmmaking. And they're very distinctive, and it doesn't take anybody very long to know that they're in a Brian De Palma movie."

'LOOPER' REVIEWS MENTION 'THE FURY' & 'CARRIE'
HARRY GEORGATOS: "THE BEST SCI-FI MOVIE SINCE 'INCEPTION'"

Earlier this month, The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips mentioned Brian De Palma's The Fury in his brief TIFF review of Rian Johnson's Looper, which opens in theaters today. According to The Boston Herald's James Verniere, "The film is set in a dystopian near-future in which 10 percent of humans have low-level telekinetic power." To Verniere, Looper evokes films such as James Cameron's The Terminator, De Palma's Carrie, and Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (the latter being "light years ahead of Looper").

Zap 2 It's Geoff Berkshire states, "Sci-fi fans will spot traces of seminal works by James Cameron, David Cronenberg, Terry Gilliam, Brian De Palma and even Robert Zemeckis as the movie unfolds, and yet Looper remains uniquely its own."

Closer to home, reader Harry Georgatos confirms that Looper carries the influence of The Fury, and adds that it is "the best sci-fi movie since Inception."

SPANISH-LANGUAGE PODCAST ON DE PALMA
'THE WORLD WITHOUT BRANDO' EPISODE COVERS 'OBSESSION', 'DRESSED TO KILL', & 'BLOW OUT'

eONE TO DISTRIBUTE 'PASSION' IN NORTH AMERICA
FILM TO BE RELEASED IN EARLY 2013
Despite the negotiations with IFC Films revealed this past Monday, Entertainment One (also known as eOne Entertainment) announced today that it has acquired the North American rights to distribute Brian De Palma's Passion. Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Screen Daily, and Deadline all reported the news, adding that Passion will be released in theaters in early 2013. (I got a pretty big laugh out of The Wrap's Brent Lang stating that "it's been over a decade since De Palma was a critics' darling." Was he ever so loved by what we might call "the critics"?)

Regarding Passion, the Deadline team states that "the deal was negotiated by ICM Partners along with SBS’ Saïd Ben Saïd and eOne’s David Reckziegel and Sejin Croninger; ICM Partners also reps De Palma." The Hollywood Reporter quotes Reckziegel (the president of eOne Films North America)-- "Rachel McAdams' and Noomi Rapace's performances are captivating and De Palma delivers another great thriller that audiences have already embraced at Venice and Toronto."

CINEPHILIACS DISCUSS 'PASSION'
A FILM ABOUT WOMEN MANIPULATING EACH OTHER VIA DIGITAL IMAGES
Peter Labuza and Simon Abrams begin a special NYFF episode of the Cinephiliacs podcast with a stimulating discussion of Brian De Palma's Passion. They delve into the characters' manipulation of digital images, as well as the use of color in the film. Abrams also discusses how he thinks there is a lot of interesting things going on in the first half of the film, contrary to the seemingly popular view that the film only picks up in its second half.

CRITIC: 'PRODIGAL' OWES DEBT TO 'THE FURY'
KENNETH BRANAGH FEATURED IN SHORT FILM, PART OF 'STARS IN SHORTS' ANTHOLOGY

Benjamin Grayson was assistant to Kenneth Branagh on last year's Thor, and now Branagh stars in Grayson's short film Prodigal, about a father who tries to keep his daughter away from two competing organizations out to harness her "special abilities" for their own purposes. The short is included in a new anthology, Stars In Shorts. The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck says the collection of shorts has no apparent overall theme, and is a mostly "rewarding grab bag." However, "The sole dud of the bunch is Benjamin Grayson’s sci-fi effort Prodigal," states Scheck, "with Kenneth Branagh as the ominous representative of a villainous organization intent on capturing a young girl with psychic powers. Even at 25 minutes, it seems overlong compared to Brian De Palma’s The Fury, to which it bears an obvious debt." Neil LaBute also has a short in the anthology called Sexting, "in which Julia Stiles, playing an aggrieved mistress to a married man, delivers a nearly eight-minute monologue directly to the camera," according to Scheck.

NY POST: 'PASSION' IS PURE CINEMA
"I WAS PRACTICALLY DRUNK ON THIS NEW MOVIE'S SENSUALITY & DAZZLE'


The New York Post's Farran Smith Nehme (also known as the Self-Styled Siren) has some passionate words for Passion. "The many, many people who hate Brian De Palma will walk out still hating him after Passion, as it flaunts his every alleged flaw," states Nehme. "Highly stylized acting -- Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace seem to have studied Kim Novak in Vertigo down to the last 'Pledge of Allegiance' -- like line delivery. Kinky sex (although the nudity is kept to a minimum). Flashy, look-ma-no-hands technique, notably a split-screen sequence that sets a performance of Afternoon of a Faun next to nefarious goings-on."

Continuing, Nehme writes, "And of course, a crazy-quilt plot. It's a remake of Alain Corneau's Love Crime, but the events still feel as though they're stitched together from the least logical elements of every other thriller De Palma ever made. Plus, you simply will not believe how heavily he references the dream sequences in Dressed to Kill. Lucky for me, Dressed to Kill is my favorite De Palma, and I was practically drunk on this new movie's sensuality and dazzle. Passion is pure cinema, giddily unrelated to any aspect of life as it is actually lived in Europe or anywhere on Planet Earth. And for me (as well as the audience at the press screening, which seemed to dig it) that's an excellent thing."