Passion

Director: Brian De Palma
Year Released: 2012
Rating: 2.0

Alpha female Christine (Rachel McAdams) and her assistant Isabelle (Noomi Rapace) really go at it when Christine undermines Isabelle on a project they're working on - this girl-on-girl love/hate escalates to the point where Christine ends up with her throat slit and Isabelle arrested for her murder. De Palma did this kind of thing (poorly, in my opinion) with Femme Fatale, and he's really no better at it now - for starters, the acting is almost as ridiculous as the plot, which goes from reasonable in the beginning to outright laughable in the last act. The obvious sexual tension between 'bisexual' Christine and Isabelle - not to mention the attraction Karoline Herfurth's character has for Isabelle - comes across as tacky lesbian chic designed to attract audiences, and De Palma actually making visual references to his past films (which were, in turn, references to Hitchcock) suggests he may be suffering from artistic inertia (let's hope he never tries to make another Redacted).