Passages movie storyline. In contemporary Paris, German filmmaker Tomas (Franz Rogowski) embraces his sexuality through a torrid love affair with a young woman named Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), an impulse that blurs the lines which define his relationship with his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw).
When Martin begins an extramarital affair of his own, he successfully gains back his husband’s attention while simultaneously unearthing Tomas’ jealousy. Grappling with contradicting emotions, Tomas must either embrace the confines of his marriage or come to terms with the relationship having run its course.
Director Ira Sachs (Forty Shades of Blue, 2005 U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize) returns with his eighth film to screen at Sundance: a grounded examination of the human experience that concentrates on the differences and similarities between physical and emotional attraction and puts forth the question of separating the art from the artist. The elegant cinematography is expertly balanced by deeply complex performances in which Sachs allows his characters to settle into quiet, uncomfortable moments and confront their imperfections. Passages is an intensely intimate piece that refuses to shy away from the messiness of life.
Passages is a 2023 French romantic drama film directed by Ira Sachs starring Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adèle Exarchopoulos. It depicts a long-time male couple, one of whom has an affair with a woman. Passages premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 23 January 2023.
Shortly after, Mubi acquired distribution rights in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland and Latin America. It screened in the Panorama section at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2023. It was also invited to the 27th Lima Film Festival in the Acclaimed section, where it screened on 10 August 2023.
Film Review for Passages
After his Cannes misfire Frankie in 2021, writer-director Ira Sachs has made a compelling return to form at Sundance with his cruelly well-observed drama Passages. It’s a bit of a bland title and one that never really pays off but its subject matter is far more compelling, a messy little movie about a specifically awful brand of narcissist who will be frighteningly familiar to many of us who have known him and even more so to those who might well be him.
Transit’s Franz Rogowski plays self-obsessed film director Tomas, married to artist Martin (Ben Whishaw), but forever curious for more. That more arrives in the shape of Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a teacher he meets at a bar before finding himself in her bedroom. He’s brazenly proud when recounting the tale back at home but when lust turns to love, or at least his concept of it, whatever conflicted openness Martin might have previously had soon curdles into distaste.
Sachs has previously shown a canny knack for recognising the often uncomfortable subtleties of relationships, most convincingly in his lovely yet grounded tale of elder gay commitment Love is Strange and the humane family drama Little Men. This is a far darker tale, a damning look at the pain certain people can inflict on others while they’re too busy focused on their own wants.
Rogowki’s Tomas has a bit of Reynolds Woodcock about him, the petulant and particular dress-maker from Phantom Thread, obsessed with his own work and reckless with his lovers. He flits between Martin and Agathe, wheedling his way into whichever bed is the warmest that night, cleverly picking partners who are more passive in their acceptance of his noxious behaviour (a scene where Agathe’s mother confronts him is of great satisfaction).
There are vague shades of The Souvenir, which offered a similarly uneasy form of voyeurism, watching smart people make stupid relationship decisions that can be easily judged with distance by some but horribly easy to empathise with for those who have been closer to such toxicity.
Sachs is a delicate writer and his script, co-written by author and longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias is initially vague on detail, in ways that do and don’t work. But his trust in both his writing and then his audience pays off with an increasingly devastating cycle of bruised hearts, a slow trail of wreckage that becomes impossible not to become involved in, no matter how hard one might sigh.
It’s an eye-openingly explicit film, with one gay sex scene that is the most unfettered I have seen in relatively mainstream cinema for a long time, but otherwise emotionally restrained, denying us the more obvious scenes of conflict we might expect from such territory. Rogowski makes for a believably odious yet charming cad while Whishaw and Exarchopoulos neatly underplay their heartbreak, subtly showing the toll of putting up with someone who mistreats you and then putting up with yourself for allowing it.
In his pre-premiere introduction, Sachs spoke about being inspired during the pandemic to create a film about intimacy but his film makes a convincing case for staying alone, a slight yet scarring study of romantic chaos.
Passages (2023)
Directed by: Ira Sachs
Starring: Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Erwan Kepoa Falé, Olivier Rabourdin, Caroline Chaniolleau, Jérôme Dauchez, Anton Salachas, Chloé Granier, Juliette Mourlon
Screenplay by: Mauricio Zacharias, Ira Sachs
Production Design by: Pascale Consigny
Cinematography by: Josée Deshaies
Film Editing by: Sophie Reine
Costume Design by: Khadija Zeggaï
Makeup Department: Natali Tabareau-Vieuille
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: SBS Distribution
Release Date: January 23, 2023 (Sundance), June 28, 2023 (France)
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