My Review of Passages (2023)

 

Written by Mauricio Zacharias And Ira Sachs And Arlette Langmann

Directed by Ira Sachs

Tomas: "You know what I was doing last night?"

Martin: "No but whatever it was you sound very excited."

There are still a few films from last year I had not caught up and this one I had been meaning to watch for a while. I'll admit, it's got a premise I'm not particularly keen on but the execution was a bit better than I thought it would be.

In this movie, you've got German director Tomas Freiburg (Franz Rogowski) living in Paris, making movies and having a bit of a stagnating marriage to Martin (Ben Whishaw). Thomas's attempts to add some excitement to his own discontentment though would cause more harm than good.

A random encounter with a woman named Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos) resulted in Tomas embarking on a relationship with her while also trying to maintain his marriage to Martin. For a moment, it seemed like Martin was willing to go along with the idea before he dumped Tomas.

Of course while Martin spent a lot of the movie bring angry at Tomas's growing relationship with Agathe, he didn't stay single for long. He hooked up with a hot writer named Amad (Erwan Kepoa Falé), much to the annoyance of his estranged husband. It's a relationship he was better suited to as well.

However with Tomas getting Agathe pregnant and being under the scrutiny of her parents, even Tomas realised he had it better with Martin. The reunion between the two only served as a reminder that they're a genuinely mismatched pair.

I think as a protagonist/main character, while Tomas is undeniably human and isn't being intentionally malicious, he does seem to want to have the best of both worlds. Ultimately he ended up with neither as both Martin and Agathe eventually rejected him, ending this movie on a bitter note.

- This movie got to Sundance after being rejected from both Cannes and the Venice Film festivals.

- Both Ira Sachs and Mubi rejected the NC-17 rating for the movie. There's a few sex scenes in this one.

- Standout music: Janet Penford's Won't You Buy My Sweet Blooming Lavender.

- Chronology: A contemporary setting in Paris. Tomas and Martin have been married for six years.

Despite my general dislike for a certain trope this movie was built on, I do have affection for Passages. It's well written, quite moody in parts and the performances from the three leads are good. The realistic ending very much worked in this movie's favour as well.

Rating: 8 out of 10