In this post, we will look at two movies, a French psychological thriller and its remake by Brian De Palma.

Love Crime (2010)

Love Crimes is the last movie from Alain Corneau and released shortly after his death. It begins as the story of two working professional women in a corporation in Paris. Superficially Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier) and her boss, Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) seem to have a great relationship. They collaborate, seem to work well together, laugh and enjoy wine will working. As a few scenes progress, one sees a passive aggressive streak from Christine, as her instructions to Christine seem to be more like commands. Thrown into the mix is Christine’s lover Philippe (Patrick Mille) who also works in the same firm as Christine sand Isabelle, who is also carrying on an affair, with Isabelle.

When Isabelle comes up with an innovative idea for a client, Christine steals it and projects the idea to the client as her own. The idea wins Christine accolades and a promotion to the firm’s main office, based in New York. While not confrontational, Isabelle through her demeanor and outward emotions, makes it clear, that she is not happy with this. Isabelle’s assistance Daniel (Guillaume Marquet) also reiterates Isabelle’s feelings and thinks she has been played by Christine. Christine, who notices Isabelle’s sadness unsympathetically brushes off Isabelle’s feelings and claims that it is ‘all business and nothing personal’.

Isabelle in retaliation, works on a secret project in the company, without the knowledge of Christine. She delivers and gets accolades from the higher ups. Christine is not one to take this lying down. It is revealed that she is well aware of Isabelle’s relationship with her lover and has been hiding her knowledge of the affair, probably in abeyance, as her secret trump card. She also knows that her boyfriend has been secretly embezzling funds from the company.

She creates a rift between her lover and Isabelle, by blackmailing the former with exposure of his corruption. This causes a meltdown in Isabelle. Isabelle is seen at the office, taking medication to cope with her anxiety. Christine further humiliates Isabelle at an office party, where she shows the video of an inebriated and unstable Isabelle, in tears, throw a tantrum while alone on the elevator and subsequently, crash her car in the company’s indoor parking lot.

Isabelle is shattered by Christine’s vicious acts. In a subsequent scene Christine is stabbed by an assailant. Isabelle is implicated for the murder and confesses that she was heavily under the influence of the medication. I will mention that in this movie, the identity of the killer is revealed immediately. I will not reveal the murderer’s identity for reasons that will become more evident, later in this article.

What happens to Isabelle now? Is she the poor girl who has given in to the situation she finds herself in? Or has the worm turned? That is the subject of the plot from this point on.

‘Love Crime’ is a great psychological thriller with thrills and twists that keeps the viewer engaged. Both Kristen Scott Thomas and have put in great performances and make both the characters more realistic. Anyone who has worked at a corporate office can relate to these two ambitious working women and all the office politics that we see in the first part of the movie. Let us now contrast this movie, to its remake.

Passion (2012)

What we can gather about a movie-maker like De Palma, is that he may makes homages to Hitchcock, or may decide to make an adaptation of another movie, but one thing he cannot do is a scene by scene copy.

Passion is his remake of Love Crimes, where De Palma makes his own enhancements to the plot and of course, brings in some of his goose eggs or obsessions, to make it his own movie. Miraculously, he manages to reduce its running time from 106 minutes to just 96 minutes. It also includes some ambitious scenes, like a fashion show and a ballet performance.

The parts of Isabelle and Christine are played by Rachel McAdams and Naomi Raplace. This movie has its plot set in Germany. The two main protagonists are colleagues in a smartphone company. The dynamics between Christine and Isabelle are similar to the original movie, except that there is more pronounced sexual power-play. For instance, there is a scene where Christine kisses Isabelle, in both movies, but the kiss is more fleeting in the french version and is longer an dseems more deliberate in De Palma’s version.

The character of Isabelle is also different. Naomi Raplace plays a colder Isabelle, who seems more capable, in holding back her tears, than her counterpart in ‘Love Crimes’. Naomi Raplace, who is known for her role as Lizabeth Salamader, the disturbed and unemotional hacker in the Millenium trilogy, channels a lot of Lizabeth’s personality into Isabelle.

In one particular scene, when Christine asks Isabelle if she loves her, the French Isabelle simply says she does with tears in her eyes. However, the Raplace’s Isabelle in “Passion”, impulsively and passionately kisses Christine, doubtlessly a subtle power move sent with a subliminal message.

One scene that differentiates the two Isabelles is when Christine shocks her at the company party with the embarrassing video. The French Isabelle is devastated, but the Raplace’s Isabelle, though initially shocked, handles the situation masterfully.

De Palma is well known for adding sensationalism to his movies, particularly in sex scenes. This one is no exception. While there are no graphic explicit scenes, there are allusions to Christine’s fetishes, to indicate that she has to be the one in charge, in any situation.

Isabelle’s male assistant Daniel in the French version is replaced with Dani (Karoline Herfurth), a lesbian. Yes, she has the hots for you-know-who, to throw in an additional twist. Thank you, De Palma. Christine’s lover Dirk(Paul Anderson) is even more sleazy and less likable than Phillipe in the French version.

Christine too is much more vicious in this incarnation and is not beyond intimidating Isabelle with a video of the latter, making love to Dirk.

Besides his signature sexual sensationalism, there are quite a few of other his signature ‘Easter eggs’. The murder scene of Christine has two of them. De Palma replaces the stabbing of Christine in the French movie with a slash to the neck. This is one of De Palma ‘signature’ homages to his idol, Hitchcock seen in Dressed to Kill.

The murder scene is shown in split screen where one side shows a mesmerizing ballet being performed and the other shows a mysterious assailant murder Christine. There is haunting music from the ballet, making this scene reminiscent of the museum scene in dressed to kill. There are two additional Easter eggs that becomes more apparent to the viewer in the final scene in ‘Passion’. One is hallucination. I will leave the other unmentioned, as a challenge to my readers. (Let me know in the comments.)

By significantly changing the ending, and by adding enough twists to the original plot De Palma adds more unexpected surprises to an viewer who has seen ‘Love Crimes’.

You cannot go wrong with either movie. Both movies have excellent screenplay, cinematography, fine performances from the leading thespians and different but surprising endings. If you can, I would suggest watching both, but make sure you watch the original French one first. If you wanted to watch only one of these movies, here is my two cents. If you want a good movie with good performances and fewer plot twists, pick “Love Crimes”. On the other hand, if you want more sensationalism, more twists and a more shocking and perhaps more far-fetched end , see “Passion”.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_(2012_film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Crime