Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes:
Celebrated filmmaker Ira Sachs (Love is Strange) makes a breathtaking return with PASSAGES, a fresh, honest and brutally funny take on messy, modern relationships, starring Franz Rogowski (Great Freedom), Ben Whishaw (Women Talking) and Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Colour). Set in Paris, this seductive drama tells the story of Tomas (Rogowski) and Martin (Whishaw), a gay couple whose marriage is thrown into crisis when Tomas begins a passionate affair with Agathe (Exarchopoulos), a younger woman he meets after completing his latest film.
Review:
Tomas (Franz Rogowski) the gay male lead of Ira Sachs ménage a trois drama Passages is so whiny, anal, selfish, and petulant that the label “toxic” easily applies. He’s the kind of person that will get annoyed with others when they can’t easily read his mind.
Tomas has decided to become a dilettante heterosexual. He dabbles in the pussy of Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos), much to the chagrin of his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw) who is open marriage latent as long as the other can keep quiet about it. That’s impossible for Martin. The dude not only needs to experience new things but talk about them endlessly. It’s pretty obvious where this drama is going, and it annoyingly takes its own sweet time getting there.
Of course, this reflects Ira Sachs own unconventional family. He and his husband, Boris Torres (an artist, as Martin sort-of is), share twins with the filmmaker Kirsten Johnson. Sachs and his writing partner, Mauricio Zacharias are really exploring the flip side of that successful, tolerant relationship. Passages is the life of Sachs if he had fucked it up and did everything utterly wrong. The answer is breakups and blowups amongst the fucking and blowjobs.
Rogowski is the id Sachs: slippery, noncommittal, a phony-earnest, unaware of his egotistical control ploys. Rogowski delivers his performance with a swivel-hipped sulky charisma that will remind most of why they fell in love and than hated that bad ex.
The misery unfurls in a straight timeline. The relationships are captured fleetingly and elliptically, almost all of it from Tomas’s viewpoint. Tomas is always commandeering the conversations, and the characters are so vaguely written that they barely seem to exist. Whishaw is fe to the point of stereotype and Exarchopoulos never rises above pouty, internally disappointed sex doll. The sex however is quite good and vividly shot. Passages was originally rated NC-17 but was released unrated.
Sachs will often film Martin or Agathe in a way that they seem to slip invisibly off the frame and out of Tomas’ sight. It reflects how little Tomas sees his partners. The lovers retreat into themselves frustrated by Tomas continual disregard of their boundaries. Eventually, they opt for complete invisibility declaring loudly and clearly their need for total independence from him.
Passages gets a 3.0/5 or a B. It’s streaming on MUBI.
Credits:
Directed by
Written by
- Mauricio Zacharias
- Ira Sachs
Produced by
- Saïd Ben Saïd
- Michel Merkt
Starring
Cinematography
Edited by
Sophie Reine
Production
company
SBS Productions
Distributed by
SBS Distribution
Release dates
- 23 January 2023(Sundance)
- 28 June 2023(France)
Running time
92 minutes[1]
Country
France
Languages
- English
- French
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