It [the internet] provides a wealth of information and images. Do you believe this is an opportunity for enrichment or a threat?
I think it is an extremely useful tool; it is like a huge library, and during the making of a film, it's really valuable because it not only allows you to quickly search information on the location, the actors, but also to find inspiration and ideas. You need to choose what is most functional to the story you want to tell. I had several ideas for the ad to be included in the film; originally, I thought of a commercial inspired by "Inception," which I loved: it was an extremely sophisticated and particular idea, but it did not convince me at all. I needed something more concrete and real, so I continued to do research and when I found the video shot by the girls I thought it was perfect and I used it.

A reference to the Ponzi scheme indicates, moreover, how these cathedrals of glass are fragile: "The economic crisis does not scare me. Hollywood has always been in crisis," says De Palma, who failed to achieve his last two projects, respectively on the scandals of Jessica Lynch [Print The Legend] and John Edwards [Tabloid]. "I've worked in all genres; I've experienced the triumphs and disasters, the independents and the major studios. Make three "Batman" in order to make Inception, like Christopher Nolan, I have neither the time nor the inclination. A blockbuster, it is primarily a series of endless meetings ... I prefer to shoot in Europe, with small budgets. We lost the beauty of film. I try to find it," sighs the admirer of Steven Soderbergh and Wes Anderson.

Still suffering setbacks he suffered in the 2000s, he keeps a grudge against the press: "As soon as Terrence Malick makes a film, it's a miracle in your eyes ... My films are often misunderstood, probably because I am a very visual director." I dare to ask if Passion, his duet for actresses (Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace), can be read as an insight into the Hollywood psyche: "After seeing the film, my agent told me that it was like attending a day's work in his office," he said, grinning.

The bout was preceded by a three-day concert featuring the likes of B.B. King and James Brown, and the filmmakers wanted to film the concert and fight with multiple cameras -- but not multiple soundmen -- and to be able to sync all the cameras with the multitrack recordings of the music acts onstage. To do this quickly and efficiently, they needed to visually display the time code for the camera, but there were no portable crystal-controlled clocks at the time.

Daly, though, modified a Heuer executive desk clock that had a crystal control and plasma display to DC power and turned it into the first smart slate. He built a series of the devices and used them in Zaire for what would become When We Were Kings, the 1997 Oscar winner for best documentary.

“That clock was probably the most significant impact I’ve had on the business,” Daly said in a 1998 interview with Filmcrew magazine. Daly also used the slates for a Grateful Dead documentary in 1977.

Close readings of De Palma's work in this mode often prompt accusations of shallowness and questions regarding the level of seriousness at play beyond the surface. And if Passion does indeed lack substance, I'd argue that it features at least the necessary amount of subtext to carry it's outlandish plot past parody (which it does directly engage with on occasion) and into the realm of social and economic commentary. The first half of the film is particularly critical of the work environment that brings these women into physical and psychological contact. Christine's rise to executive prominence has apparently coincided with the loss of her ability to engage emotionally despite selling tales of a damaged past in an effort to elicit sympathy from Isabelle, who herself can't advance professionally without ceding to her superiors and engaging in morally compromising situations. Technology is likewise prodded as computers, cell phones, and various recording devices facilitate greed, blackmail, and corruption.

This is obviously material ripe for dramatic staging, and De Palma continues to deploy his trademark aesthetic touches with a master's hand. After undercutting Isabelle with a particularly evil display of public embarrassment, the movie shifts tones from corporate drama to psychosexual thriller, with canted angles, split-screen dioramas, and dramatically shadowed sequences of violence and eroticism (though it's surprising how little actual sex is on display here). De Palma utilizes Rapace's blank features as another surface from which to refract the drama, while McAdams's glowing visage is exploited to its fullest extent, transforming from plastic grin to a unchecked rage to outpourings of tears, sometimes within the same scene. Their hair, wardrobe, even postures, are in direct contrast to one another, and in typical De Palma fashion, their varying states of mental stability are questioned and eventually collapsed as visions fold into dreams and dreams engage with waking life, to the point where one is nearly inseparable by the time the film closes.

The film occasionally veers perilously close to losing the thread, but at all times it's apparent who is truly pulling the strings and manipulating these characters, as scenes oftentimes dramatically contradict one another only to play off the tension provoked by such juxtapositions just to pull the rug out from under the viewer. De Palma has long since abandoned verisimilitude, but there's an emotional truth to the narrative that precludes reading these characters strictly as ciphers. The mileage De Palma has gotten out of this formula, which itself is a knowing revision of the modes of the classic thriller construct, is impressive. And while Passion never demands anything above direct engagement with our basic fears and emotions, it's all the more fun when one allows the surface pleasures to bolster its themes, thus enhancing our understanding of De Palma and his continued pursuit of realizing the potential of the cinematic form.

Still, McAdams clearly has a blast playing a calculating bitch and the inevitable hyper-stylized and meticulously edited climax sequence, which De Palma is known for, is as riveting in exaggerated comic form as it is in sincere thriller form.

It's just unfortunate that those unfamiliar with the director's work will have absolutely no context for the abstract and oblique tonal shifts or the references, leaving them to dismiss the film as terrible.