Passion

Passion is a movie I like far more than it deserves. This movie is frustrating, uneven and confusing. Unfortunately, I’m basically a magpie and this movie is the cinematic equivalent of a shiny thing.

Directed by Brian de Palma of Scarface and Carrie fame, Passion is the story of Isabelle’s relationship with her boss Christine. Played by Rachel McAdams, Christine is basically McAdams’ character from Mean Girls as a high class business executive. Isabelle is Christine’s protege and Christine expresses weird, possessive affection for her. This affection turns sour, however. Christine pettily ruins Isabelle’s life for a brief period of time before being murdered. It appears as though Isabelle is being framed for Christine’s murder… Or is Christine even dead at all?

I genuinely don’t know. The last act is partially dream sequence, partially not and I’m not entirely sure which is which.

The best way to describe Passion is an excellent second act of an unfinished story. There is no satisfactory beginning or end. There is not enough build-up of Christine and Isabelle’s relationship. Why does Christine love her? Why is she so possessive? How does this play into her unusual sexual habits? The movie just sort of starts and drops you into it without introduction.

The ending is also too abrupt. The last scene in the movie feels less like a scene to go out on and more like a scene that would usher in the third act. Instead, the third act we got was mostly dream sequence. It’s quite frustrating and leaves too much unexplained and untouched on.

The actual WLW content in this is pretty thin. Christine and Isabelle’s relationship hovers between queer subtext and queer text. Both of them spend more time involved in a sexual relationship with a man. The overtly queer character is Dani, Isabelle’s assistant who blackmails her into a relationship. As a general rule for this website, the queer activity protagonists engage in has to be explicit rather than subtext and consensual. I’m not entirely sure this movie meets my own criteria limitations. I’m reviewing it anyway because it is definitely of WLW interest and also because I’ve already seen it and this sit needs content. Still, would have been a better movie if it was a gayer movie.

Despite all of that, this movie is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. Mostly because it looked pretty. This movie is so slick with a great colour palette of contrasting black and white with the occasional shock of red red. Brian de Palma has had a decades long career of visually stunning movies and Passion is no exception. I find it refreshing because so few WLW movies are directed by auteurs.

Passion is also a thriller that I did find genuinely thrilling. Maybe that’s because I had increasingly less of an idea of what was going on as the movie progressed but I was certainly engaged. I’ve seen a lot of thrillers that far from leaving my thrilled left me bored. Passion is not one of them. I was on the edge of my seat wanting to know how this movie ended. (The ending, as it turns out, was rather disappointing but it was still a thrilling 90 minutes leading up to said disappointment.

I can’t objectively recommend this movie because it’s frustrating, not gay enough and lacks both a proper beginning and ending. But goddamn it, it just looks so pretty!

Overall rating: 6.1/10

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