Since hearing about this lesbian thriller starring Rachel McAdams (my number one girl crush) and Noomi Rapace (the original Girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo), I had a lot of interest.
If only to satisfy the unusual preoccupation I’ve had with Rachel McAdams since I dreamt about being in the middle of a love triangle with her and Owen Wilson.
I mentioned this to only a handful of people, which included my best friends Sam and Dave. Both of whom are intrigued whenever I bring up the sexual contents that’ve been filtering into my stories over the past few years. I also decided to indulge Dave’s stocking fetish this Christmas by asking him to send me a pair with a copy of this movie.
I don’t remember if it even played locally, but there was no way I’d be able to explain why I’d want to see it if it did.
I’m still keen on seeing “About Time” and “The Vow…” at some point anyway.
I finally got around to watching “Passion” last night so I could give them my feedback. I came in with all kinds of expectations. That there’d be murder involved, there’d be backstabbing and there’d be blatant lesbian overtones.
In that department, I’m sorry to admit, I was VERY disappointed. This was absolutely nothing like “Black Swan” where Natalie Portman spent a number of scenes touching herself and the climax of that was an oral sex scene with Mila Kunis.
The most I got out of this were a few girl-on-girl kisses, a sex scene where a blindfolded Rachel McAdams is getting hot and heavy with her masked lover, and a scene where she’s dressed in lingerie. Oh, and one scene where she feigned being sexual assaulted by Noomi’s assistant resulting in her shirt opening.
Oh well… I really doubt you can consider this a full-on lesbian thriller. Heck, not even half on. Luckily for me, I’ve already set the groundwork down for my love triangle story.
On the other hand… looking at the movie as it is, it really wasn’t that bad. It was mildly enjoyable with the content it allowed. It had a decent story, lots of good tension and so on. My only gripe was that they dropped the ball on the ending. You’re led to believe such-and-such happened, but then she wakes up and part of it was a dream. You just never knew sometimes what was real and what wasn’t.
“Black Swan” was better at establishing the truths and un-truths.
Throughout, I couldn’t help thinking that Christine (Rachel McAdams) would have been what Regina George have been like, had the episode with Cady Heron not happened in “Mean Girls” where she ended up the movie a bitch reformed. Her attitude was similar, but more on the grounds of passive-aggressive than being bitchy in an obvious/upfront way.
In a nutshell, the story is that Christine is the boss of a cell phone company. Noomi plays Isabelle James, an associate of hers. Isabelle comes up with a marketing scheme, which Christine loves and inevitably takes credit for. Isabelle wants her ideas to be heard and keeps pushing to get noticed while Christine does her best to undermine her and stay on top.
Parts had me thinking about a line from “Mean Girls” where Cady says how Regina is such a bitch, but you still wanted so bad for her to like you. I felt that way about Christine and in part, I think Isabelle felt the same way. But it gets progressively humiliating until it boils over.
Trust me, though, the smallest problem with this movie is the fact Rachel McAdams gets murdered…
so there’s a huge chunk of it where Isabelle works to clear her name as the biggest suspects, succeeds, but then her assistant Dani (who actually has a lesbian crush on her) tells her how she knows the truth and plans to use that truth to make Isabelle treat her better and blackmail her into starting a relationship with her.
Another nit-pick how the movie dragged in the second half where they were doing the murder investigation and stuff. I kinda just wanted the movie to end at this point. Not that I regret seeing it by any means and I will see it a number of times for sure.
Violence aside, there wasn’t too much there for a hard R-rating. You saw maybe a glimpse of Noomi’s boobs during her sex scene with Dirk, some dude at the company that apparently embezzled money and Christine threatened to expose him if he didn’t leave the company (and break off his engagement with Isabelle). And apparently Christine had some strange sexual fetishes, including the mask (later it comes part of the murder evidence), blindfolds and what appeared to be the most anatomically correct (not to mentioned well-endowed) dildo I’d seen ever… in movies and reality. But it’s not the type of thing I actively look into.
Speaking of my girl crush, Rachel McAdams makes some pretty hot sex sounds in the blind-folded scene and I love that hair color on her. Plus the lingerie scene is hot as well, but it had some stuff missing for me. Not enough sex… never thought I’d say that ever 😛 and I noticed early on that she was smoking in every other scene. Something I could use for my story, potentially.
One review said that only fans of the writer/director Brian De Palma would like this movie.
I’d never heard of this French guy before, but I thought it was an aesthetically pleasing, gripping picture. It just wasn’t what I thought it was gonna be 😛
oh well, I could write something like that myself anyway.
and I probably need to see “Black Swan” again pretty soon too.
The Musings of DreamyPopRoyalty 