It's 20 years since Brian De Palma made a foray into the world of the thriller movie. He returns to the genre with Passion, starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace. The movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival and will shortly be screened at the Toronto Film Festival. De Palma himself has been busily dismissing comparisons of the film to the work of Alfred Hitchcock as "phooey," saying "Hitchcock? Don't understand." He then added "This is basically a sexy murder mystery. You should be shocked, you should be scared and you should be laughing because it's all at work."

The film centers around the two female characters and Noomi Rapace told reporters that she was grateful to be depicting a relationship between two females that was neither "cute" or "just friends," Associated Press report. De Palma seems proud of the strength of the female characters, boasting that "This is very much a film for women. They play off each other very well" and adding that when he was presented with the opportunity to make the movie, (which is a remake of the French film Love Crime), he was attracted to the two ladies at the center of the plot: "It had two extraordinarily good women characters and I thought I could make it better by keeping the identity of the murderess secret until the end."

Response to the film has been largely positive; it displays much of the intensity that movie buffs will have come to expect from the director's signature style. Even Noomi Rapace admitted that filming the movie had a disturbing effect on her: "It got to my brain and my soul. I had the most crazy dreams and I felt dark inside." A must-see movie for who like their movies on the dark side, then.