Ira Sachs’ next film will focus on a queer love tri­an­gle of Euro­pean fes­ti­val darlings

Some­times, the art of film­mak­ing seems sim­pler than we might think. Every now and then, a work comes along to sug­gest that cin­e­mat­ic suc­cess is as straight­for­ward as hir­ing two or more attrac­tive per­form­ers and let­ting them be their most mag­net­ic, entranc­ing selves – giv­ing the peo­ple what they want with grace, dig­ni­ty, and skill.

That’s the pre­lim­i­nary read on Pas­sages, the new film from Ira Sachs, which will bring togeth­er three of the most stag­ger­ing­ly good-look­ing actors fre­quent­ing the Euro­pean fes­ti­val cir­cuit right now. A report from The Film Stage indi­cates that he’s already begun shoot­ing his fol­low-up to his under-appre­ci­at­ed, Isabelle Hup­pert-led Frankie, a por­trait of roman­tic dis­sat­is­fac­tion that seems to be in line with this lat­est project.

In it, Franz Rogows­ki (a recent favorite of Germany’s Chris­t­ian Pet­zold) and Ben Whishaw (last seen as the book­ish Q in the James Bond flick No Time to Die) star as a pair of lovers who have been in a ten­der rela­tion­ship for fif­teen years. But an ​“inti­ma­cy tri­an­gle” threat­ens to tear their union asun­der when one of them – which actor that will be has yet to be revealed – has an affair with a woman, por­trayed by Adèle Exar­chopou­los (one-time Palme d’Or recip­i­ent for Blue Is the Warmest Color).

Know­ing the fil­mog­ra­phy of Ira Sachs, this infi­deli­ty will lead to a full reap­praisal of the self for the three char­ac­ters caught up in it, exam­in­ing not just their own sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions, but their aspi­ra­tions, inse­cu­ri­ties, and the oth­er messy intan­gi­bles that make up the com­plex fig­ures peo­pling his work. If Frankie is any indi­ca­tor, this will like­ly take place in a daz­zling­ly telegenic Euro­pean locale.

With pro­duc­tion cur­rent­ly under­way, a pre­mière at Cannes next year (where Frankie land­ed Sachs a choice spot in the Com­pe­ti­tion slate) looks to be in the cards. With the attached per­son­nel, it’s not hard to imag­ine the red car­pet treat­ment – they all know the Croisette like the back of their respec­tive, well-mois­tur­ized hands.