Between these two scenes, and the one posted yesterday, the film is really looking good to me (albeit dubbed in German). The Donaggio score as Karoline looks hurtfully through the window at the two lovers enjoying each others' company makes for a sublime moment of sadness, as well. Can't wait to see how it all fits together the way it was meant to be seen.

Speaking of which, Entertainment Weekly's "Summer Movie Preview" issue is out now, and it lists Passion for July, with an exact date to be announced. Here's the brief included by Grady Smith in the "Also Playing" sidebar for July:

"Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace each have a ruthless PASSION for success at an ad agency, and they'll do whatever (and whomever) it takes to get ahead in Brian De Palma's kinky thriller."

Passion Film Clip (dubbed in German)

In an interview posted last week at Thompson On Hollywood, Scott Thomas gives Matt Mueller a few more details about the situation. Mueller asks her "whether she ever felt 'lost' on big Hollywood films like Mission: Impossible."

"I used to love it," Scott Thomas replies. "I love it less now because I'm more impatient. When you're working on a small film, you feel very much part of the actual filmmaking process. When you're on a huge film, it's all technical so that's when I enjoy being told to stand there, duck my head because something's going to fly over it. I like all that, too. On Mission: Impossible, Brian De Palma gave me one of the most cruel notes. I was standing in a lift trying to look like I'm a spy and Brian said, 'Cut! Kristin, stop looking like you're thinking about your orchards in Russia!'"

About a year ago, Mikael Gaudin-Lech posted an essay about Woton's Wake at Stardust Memories. "A mythological digression," states Gaudin-Lech, "Woton's Wake is a wandering made of odds and ends, nightmares and dreams, cardboard and ghosts, figures of haunted expressionism (currently in the spotlight at the Cinematheque) which reflected 'the eternal concern of the German soul which seeks to meet in dreams and fantasy' [H. Eisner Lotte quote from 'Notes on the style of Fritz Lang', in La Revue du Cinema, February 1947]. Similarly, if 'burning from within is what best characterizes the Murnalien actor' (Hervé Joubert-Laurencin), Woton embodies this character's internal combustion, a monstrous creature who disappears behind distorting makeup, ablaze, making his entire grotesque face unrecognizable (fire, smoke, scabs, hair pieces, makeup)."

Later in the essay, Gaudin-Lech, while describing the first scenes of Woton's Wake, notes a direct reference to Alain Resnais' Hiroshima, mon amour, which is one of the published screenplays that appears on the bookshelf at the start of the film (see image above). "In the foreground, Woton, Nosferatu hybrid and elusive, haunting the rooftops, surprises an embracing couple with an ignited blowtorch, creating a vivid picture that obviously brings to mind the bodies of Hiroshima, mon amour. Using canted angles, fades, close-ups, a persistent contrast between the white of the sky and the black of the buildings, highlighting the salient edges of natural scenery and the thrust of its frames, DePalma transforms the film school where his film was shot into a universe dreamlike and strange, made of rubble and devastated warehouses in disarray. Of course, the German Expressionist cinema was summoned, but also abstract art, the underground cinema shot in Bolex 16mm, contemporary architecture..."

The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson in Five Shots from Kevin B. Lee on Vimeo.