When perusing director Ira Sachs’ filmography, one can’t help but feel that Sachs has some thoughts about marriage. Married Life, a post-WWII film involving marital unhappiness and murder attempts, might not feel akin to Love is Different, a modern tale about a married pair physically separated by urban rent gouging, but the dissolution (or evolution, depending on your take) of commitment seems to preoccupy the director’s mind for years. His newest film, Passages, explores an apparent seismic shift between Tomas (Franz Rogowski) and his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw) when Tomas begins to openly sleep with a woman. However, the shift doesn’t seem as drastic; Martin barely flinches when Tomas blurts out the news. Instead, Martin pushes him away in the same way he did when they were in the club on the night of the affair. At this point, we know that their relationship has been dead in the water for a while.
Tomas’s admission happens early in the film, forgoing clandestine operations or secrets hanging over their heads. The film quickly progresses as Tomas moves in with the woman, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), when Martin asks for a separation. Their marital issues sorta head to a boiling point — if that boiling point meant a desperate Tomas flouncing between Agathe and Martin when something goes awry in one of the relationships (“I miss being with a man,” he cries into Martin’s shoulder after a contentious dinner with Agathe’s parents). Tomas’s charged, misguided mistakes lead to collateral damage for Martin and Agathe, who are consumed by the whirlwind chaos of new and rehashed love.
While Sachs and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias apply personal vulnerability to the characters, the emotional motifs in Passages are splashed with little complication. The characters move and breathe like real people, allowing their lives to surpass the singularity of romance. Tomas is a German film director, presumably known for an irate personality on set (Passages open with Tomas berating an actor in front of a quiet crew). On the other hand, Martin’s steady career as a British graphic designer seems to provide a satisfaction in this sector of his life. Tomas’s tumultuous turnovers speak to the precarious nature of his type of success (he runs to Martin for comfort when the first screening of his film was not well-received) while Martin’s reticence allows for a careful but firmer foundation in his next relationship with Amad (Erwan Kepoa Falé), a calm-natured writer. Agathe, who is called a bitch by a man she coldly breaks up with in the beginning of the film, is a schoolteacher who doesn’t seem like she wants to be tethered to difficulties. It is confounding when she falls for Tomas, but her making sense of freedom in a relationship with a man bound to another gives hope to the idea that, as cynical as she might seem, she holds out for a future, too.
What I find so striking about Passages is that it’s a simple movie about the overwhelming complexity of emotions. Tomas’s actions might meet the textbook definition of selfishness, but his endeavors are rooted by the need for security and the feeling of being wanted. It may not be in the relationship code of ethics, but it’s understandable why Tomas is drawn to Agathe, who wants him, when Martin rejects him. It’s also understandable why he runs back to Martin, starving for scraps from a longer, grown love. The desire to be desired can feel like a human flaw — or, at least in the cinematic playbook, a set-up for a mistake about to happen. The film’s sex scenes play to the caliber of the characters’ passion (I’m not one to get into the merit of sex scenes, but in this case, they occur at pivotal intimate scenes that guide where the characters’ hearts lie), but in between, there is a stillness in the post-coital rests or after the verbal hurricane of an argument. A frame might be mistaken for an oil painting if it weren’t for the slight rise of a chest breathing in bed. Tomas kneeling at the side of a hallway becomes a grand portrayal for a character in loss.
Sachs might not choose to detail the correlations between his personal life and his movies, but even in this fictional tapestry, we are drawn to the characters because they are like us, or that we are/were them. On paper, Tomas is an annoying terror, but Rogowski’s performance invites our attention to the yearning behind his sullen face and acid remarks. Whishaw rebuffs the long-suffering partner role, knowing that he carries the ultimate decisive power to the end — rather, whatever fate lies for them there.
Passages
2023
dir. Ira Sachs
91 min.
Opens Friday, 8/11 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
Director Ira Sachs will be in attendance for a live Q&A on Sunday, 8/13 at the 4:00 showing!
