A love triangle tinged with l’amour fou
Franz Rogowski is one of the best actors working today. A fearless chameleon who has worked with directors as varied as Terrence Malick, Michael Haneke, and Christian Petzold, Rogowski brings his formidable skills to the challenging role of filmmaker Tomas in Ira Sachs’s “Passages.” In lesser hands, the extremely unlikable Tomas would be intolerable; it’s the actor’s admirable commitment to the part that makes this film almost worth watching.
“I had sex with a woman,” Tomas tells his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), after not coming home the night before. “Can I tell you about it, please?” The bluntness of the request is darkly comic, but it sheds some light on the kind of marriage they have. It’s implied that Martin accepts some unfaithfulness from Tomas, though Tomas has never slept with a woman before while in their relationship — that’s uncharted territory.
The woman in question is schoolteacher Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos from 2013’s “Blue Is the Warmest Color”). She knows Tomas is married to a man, but she proceeds with the affair. The prospect of a new lover, and the newness of heterosexual sex, consumes Tomas, who moves in with Agathe after she gets pregnant. Martin accepts this separation, but Tomas wants to have his husband on speed dial as backup, which Martin can’t seem to resist.
If we’re to describe the romantic entanglement of “Passages” as a love triangle, then Tomas is the 90-degree right angle in it. His overbearing personality is always front and center. As a result, Agathe and Martin are reduced to being willing participants in their own misery. Even when Martin begins a relationship with Amad (Erwan Kepoa Falé), a gentle writer who provides the affection he craves, Tomas is allowed to bogart his way in and cause trouble.
I confess that I have zero tolerance, and even less sympathy, for characters who are doormats — so take my criticisms with a grain of salt here. Sachs does offer one brief moment of emotional insight into Agathe and Martin’s actions by staging a brief scene between just the two of them. It’s the one time Exarchopoulos and Whishaw stand out.
Having a sociopathic character as the center of attention can try the audience’s patience, but as always, Sachs is not concerned with providing easy answers or soothing the viewer. He and his longtime writing partner, Mauricio Zacharias, present the story and characters as they are, often leaving out details that we’re expected to either infer or ignore.
If you’re familiar with Sachs’s work, this film’s tone is more in line with 2012’s “Keep the Lights On” than 2014’s gentler, more bittersweet “Love Is Strange.” I’m a fan of Sachs (“Strange” was my number one movie of 2014), and I didn’t mind a much tougher sit like “Lights,” but this movie didn’t work for me, and I wanted to understand why.
The problem, and I’ve seen this film twice to confirm it, isn’t that Tomas is unlikable; it’s that he’s unlikable and not even remotely interesting as a character. Wearing midriff-baring outfits that are better suited for a nightclub than dinner with Agathe’s ( justifiably concerned) parents doesn’t add up to character development. And Rogowski gives Tomas a lisp in a voice that’s grating and whiny. I respected Rogowski’s commitment to the role, but I questioned why anyone would want to be around Tomas longer than five minutes.
“Passages” does provide a possible answer to that question, and here’s where Ira Sachs gets into trouble: Tomas is apparently very, very good in bed. There’s a tinge of l’amour fou to the proceedings. “I wanted to make a horny film,” Sachs has said in interviews, and he is not shy about shooting long, realistic-looking (and, yes, super hot) straight and gay sex scenes.
As a result, our pals at the MPA slapped an NC-17 on “Passages,” and the director’s comments about that are well worth reading. This isn’t his first fight with the ratings board — he got a ridiculous R on “Love Is Strange” for a few curse words — but this time he surrendered the rating. “Passages” is now unrated.
It’s important to note the MPA’s trend of being harder on gay sex and female expressions of pleasure (see the furor over 2010’s “Blue Valentine” for an example of the latter). Rogowski’s sex scenes with Exarchopoulos are clothed, but his scene with Whishaw is not only very nude but also very accurately depicted in one long take. And it’s no more explicit than most heterosexual sex scenes.
Though great sex may be the reason Agathe and Martin put up with Tomas, you won’t be getting any of that at the Coolidge while watching this movie. But if you can admire a movie’s technique (and its hotness) above all else, you’ll enjoy “Passages.” For me, it’s an intriguing near-miss.