Pas­sages review – a tan­ta­lis­ing roman­tic car-crash

“Watch­ing him is like watch­ing a rac­coon rum­mage through garbage cans. What is he gonna do now? Why look at any­thing else, while this is going on?” This was John C Reilly’s assess­ment of Joaquin Phoenix’s unique allure as a screen actor, and the same applies to Phoenix’s Ger­man look-a-like, Franz Rogows­ki. He is the star of Ira Sachs’ new Paris-set cou­pling dra­ma, Pas­sages, and there’s not a sec­ond he’s on screen where, in good con­science, you’d be able to tear your eyes away from his end­less­ly expres­sive face and body.

As the louche but inci­sive film direc­tor Tomas, he is a ball of con­tra­dic­tions: explo­sive­ly mel­low; a hot, spec­trum-tra­vers­ing pres­ence who, in this instance, con­stant­ly skirts the precipice of mak­ing a deci­sion that’s like­ly going to ruin some­one else’s life. Tomas appears to be based on the late Ger­man film­mak­er Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder, him­self known for his pow­ers of manip­u­la­tion and intox­i­ca­tion, play­ing lovers off one anoth­er and indulging in roman­tic pow­er plays as a way to spice up those dull moments between projects.

We learn that Tomas is mar­ried to Ben Whishaw’s more emo­tion­al­ly ground­ed print­mak­er Mar­tin, who you imag­ine spends much of his time attempt­ing to reign in his husband’s flighty pas­sions. Yet, you are left to imag­ine, as the film opens on Tomas decid­ing to sleep with Adèle Exar­chopou­los’ school teacher Agathe at the wrap par­ty for his film. Did he do this as pet­ty revenge for Mar­tin head­ing home ear­ly because he had an ear­ly start? Or was their mar­riage becom­ing stale and required a sur­pris­ing twist as a way to re-inten­si­fy things?

The answer is, we sim­ply don’t know for sure, as Tomas is not some­one who is will­ing or per­haps able to express the ratio­nale behind his pri­mal bod­i­ly impuls­es. His enig­mat­ic qual­i­ty is what makes the film fas­ci­nat­ing: are we sup­posed to be repelled by his nar­cis­sism and what appears to be a per­sis­tent search for self-plea­sure? Or, is he the one char­ac­ter who is tru­ly unshack­led from society’s con­ser­v­a­tive stric­tures? Is he depressed or enlight­ened? Is his behav­iour an exten­sion of his art, or vice versa?

Sex is key here, and Sachs stages a num­ber of erot­ic clinch­es which allow us to think that Tomas sees these acts of phys­i­cal inti­ma­cy as a nec­es­sary, nar­co­tis­ing high… until the next one. The film asks the per­ti­nent ques­tion of whether it’s pos­si­ble to focus on per­pet­u­al per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion and extend empa­thy to oth­ers at the same time, or if those two modes of liv­ing are, in fact, mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. And it asks these ques­tions in the spe­cif­ic con­text of a (new­ly?) bisex­u­al man explor­ing the advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of being with a straight woman and a gay man.

The film makes for a involv­ing and often mor­dant­ly fun­ny three-han­der, and Exar­chopou­los and Whishaw are both superb despite being giv­en the slight­ly thank­less task of clear­ing things up in Tomas’s wake. Yet the one scene they share togeth­er marks the film’s high­light, a moment of dark rev­e­la­tion and clar­i­ty which final­ly allows the extent of their lover’s self-serv­ing scal­ly­wag ten­den­cies to be ful­ly understood.

Pas­sages rakes over some fair­ly well-worn rela­tion­ship ter­rain, riff­ing on ground­work from French doyens such as Éric Rohmer, Andre Tech­iné and Jacques Nolot, but it does so with enough unique insight and, at points, a sear­ing inten­si­ty of pur­pose. Rogowski’s com­bustible pres­ence super­charges the pro­ceed­ings and, in all, it’s one of Sachs’ most ful­ly-realised and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly per­cep­tive works.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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