Passion of Mind
Passion of Mind is a 2000 American drama film starring Demi Moore.[2] It was the first English-language film from Belgian director Alain Berliner, best known for the arthouse success Ma Vie en Rose (1997). The film received negative reviews from critics and became a box-office bomb, grossing just $769,272 against its $12 million budget. Moore received a nomination for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for her roles.
Passion of Mind
Reception[edit]
Passion of Mind garnered negative reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 19% approval rating, based on 36 reviews, with an average score of 4/10.[3] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 28 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[4]
Emanuel Levy, writing for Variety, criticized Bass and Field's "narrowly-scoped, undernourished script" for taking its main concept and explained it in "a more rational and clinical way", but praised Berliner and his production crew for constructing "workable tension" during the first half with "impressive mise-en-scene" and "smooth transitions" between the two different lives and the performances of Moore, Skarsgård and Fichtner, concluding that: "Due to them, "Passion of Mind" is more successful and enjoyable as a variation on the prevalent screen theme of romantic triangle than as a psychological case of split personality."[5] Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle was also critical of the "woefully underwritten" script telling "a preposterous story" with an unearned "explanatory climax", but gave praise to Moore, Skarsgård and Fichtner, saying they "perform ably and strike more than a few pleasant moments in this otherwise forgettable drama."[6] Roger Ebert felt the screenplay paled in comparison to the similarly premised Me Myself I when constructing its story with supernatural and multiple personality elements, saying it gave unanswered questions that overshadow the content and leads to an "unconvincingly neat" conclusion.[7] Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film a "D+" grade, calling it "a weirdly rococo and psychologically nonsensical application" of the "folks surfing the space-time/living-dead continuum" formula that was previously used by Frequency, Me Myself I and Sliding Doors.[8]
Moore was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for her roles, but lost to Madonna for The Next Best Thing.[9]