Direction: Ira Sachs
Country: USA
Ira Sachs, the director of Love is Strange (2014) and Little Men (2016), follows up with Passages, an intense drama film that’s neither kitschy nor unrealistic. The film’s Paris is a place where lust and artistic ambition can coexist; and that city atmosphere seems to suit Tomas (Franz Rogowski), a German filmmaker who abandons his longtime English husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), to have an affair with a woman, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos).
Propelled by desiring forces and emotional ebbs and flows, the film marks a tough period of transition in the lives of these three characters. There’s this cumulative toxicity spread by an electric narcissist who lives according to his own pleasures, without taking others into consideration. Tomas’ unsettling ego is harmed when his dominance fails. Conveying exactly that, Rogowski elevates a story that, although meandering on occasion, is implacably lucid. It’s a painful view of the failures, doubts and losses of love.
Sachs is proficient in capturing the push-and-pull of relationships, and we can feel the jealousy, frustration and tension oozing from the scenes co-written with Mauricio Zacharias, who teams up with the director for the fifth time. In the case of the female character, the screenwriters understood that quiet desperation is often more moving than noisy suffering, and we do feel commiseration for her.
Passages has the ability to be simultaneously disciplined and unpredictable. Even if it doesn’t come with the power of Sachs’ previous works, this is still a lavish and opulent story that ends pungently at the sound of free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler’s “Rejoice Spirit”.
