“Passion” isn’t Brian De Palma’s first remake, but it may be his worst: an over-inflated, melodramatically hot-blooded version of what was a cool French thriller.
The French film, 2010’s “Love Crimes” from Alain Corneau, starred Ludivine Sagnier as the ambitious but mild-mannered No. 2 to a snaky executive played by Kristin Scott Thomas. When Thomas’s character grabs a promotion by claiming credit for Sagnier’s ideas and work, Sagnier murders her. Which is when the fun begins.
De Palma, who adapted the screenplay, keeps the plot and even the individual story beats intact. Yet he inflates it with operatic excesses, in the camera work, the music and, most particularly, the plotting, infusing it with his sensibility, which seems exactly wrong for the material.
This review continues on my website.