William Fichtner and Demi Moore in "Passion of Mind."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, we give this film a: Stars: Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgard and William Fichtner Director: Alain Berliner Rated: PG-13, with profanity, sexuality and partial nudity Length: 105 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(June 30, 2000) -- "One day, I realized I could no longer tell my dream world from my real world," Demi Moore intones in a voice-over at the beginning of Passion of Mind, a direly uneven movie by Alain Berliner, whose debut film was the marvelous Ma Vie En Rose.

Most of that inconsistency comes from the screenplay, by David Field and one-man script-factory Ron Bass. They take a highly workable premise and load it down with some of the clunkiest dialogue ever heard -- at least in a film not dubbed from another language.

Moore plays a woman known alternately as Marty and Marie. When first seen, she is Marie, the happy (but widowed) mother of two young girls, living an idyllic existence in France as a New York Times book reviewer. But every night when she goes to sleep, she dreams she is Marty, a high-strung, hard-charging literary agent in New York.

When she's Marty, however, she believes that she's dreaming each night that she's Marie. It's no wonder she looks tired all the time. She no sooner closes her eyes to go to sleep as one of these women than she wakes up as the other one. Talk about trying to have it all.

The problem is that she barely has any; both lives are that lovelorn. Marie barely has spoken to a man since her husband died two years earlier. And Marty is so busy making deals and taking care of business that she has no time for men.

Each of the women sees a psychiatrist to talk about the dream life, but neither can figure out which life is the real one. Each shrink insists that the other life must be the fantasy, which is neither surprising nor helpful.

Then both women meet men -- and seemingly ideal men at that. Marie hooks up with William (Stellan Skarsgard), a famous author whose book she once panned. Solicitous and gentle, he has her swooning in short order (though she won't let him stay over, for fear of what might happen if she accidentally awoke in the middle of the night).

Marty, meanwhile, connects with Aaron (William Fichtner), the business manager of one of her clients. He is attracted to the skittish, stand-offish Marty and makes a concerted effort to win her trust as a friend before attempting any romantic advances.

Eventually, Marty and Marie both confide in their lovers about their alternate lives and their alternate lovers. One of the men becomes jealous; the other tries to understand what is going on.

It's a solid set-up and Berliner invests it with both mystery and romance, despite the wooden banter. When it comes time to unveil the truth, the movie threatens to suddenly transform into a horror film before thinking better of that wrong-headed impulse. The finale, though it smacks of The Sixth Sense, has surprising emotional weight, though it winds up being disappointingly literal.

Much of what works about the film has to do with an unmannered, natural performance by Moore, who creates a woman who wants to be able to live in both worlds and feels torn by men who want to claim her for themselves. Skarsgard and Fichtner provide an interesting contrast, both playing strong feelings with admirable restraint.

Berliner captures the dreamy sense of unreality in both worlds, keeping the audience guessing until he's forced to wrap the puzzle up with its too-neat conclusion. Passion of Mind springs from an interesting concept, but its script forces the filmmaker to labor to keep the writers from squandering what's best about the idea.