2024 Entry #019 01-14-24 “Passages” is a 2023 French romantic drama film by openly gay director Ira Sachs (“The Delta”, “Keep the Lights On”, “Love Is Strange”, “Little Men”, “Frankie”) and starring Franz Rogowski (“Great Freedom”), openly gay actor Ben Whishaw (“Enduring Love”, “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer”, “Brideshead Revisited”, “Skyfall”, “Cloud Atlas”, “The Danish Girl”, “Spectre”, “No Time to Die”), and Adèle Exarchopoulos (“Blue Is the Warmest Colour”). The story follows a gay couple, Tomas (Franz Rogowski) & Martin (Ben Whishaw), whose marriage encounters a crisis when the emotionally manipulative Tomas begins a passionate affair with a young female school teacher named Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos).
This was quite good. All of the performances here were either good or great; not a weak link in the chain. I disliked Franz Rogowski’s character Tomas immediately, but he felt true to life; indeed, I’ve dated men like him. And in some ways, I’ve even been like him. The one time I cheated on a partner (many, many years ago), it was with a woman. And similarly to Tomas, I told my lover about it right after it happened, but for me I had so much guilt that I couldn’t enjoy it – which is why it has never happened again in any of my other relationships. But this may be part of why I hated him so much. But the film seems to hate him as well, or at least it shows the consequences for his repeated carelessness with the lives of those he claims to love. It’s just a game for him; he wants everything, so it is nice to see him end up with nothing. There were times when I was angry at Martin and Agathe as well, but their imperfect responses are measured and wholly believable. There’s a motif in the film, a side story about a book that an attractive author named Amad (Erwan Kepoa Falé) has written – he has connections to each of the main characters, and I believe his purpose here is in some ways thematic. Each of the main characters are a passage in the story of the lives of their fellow leads. Some of those books may have a happy ending – but this film just gives us these chapters to ponder. Nicely done.