Review: 'Passages' delivers passion and raw sexuality, in its portrayal of a self-centered filmmaker burning through relationships

A very good movie about a very bad person, director Ira Sachs’ “Passages” is a raw portrait of two relationships and the self-destructive narcissist who’s the fulcrum for both of them.

Tomas (played by the German actor Franz Rogowski) is a film director who has just wrapped production on a movie in Paris. At the bar, Tomas tries to get his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), to dance with him, but when Martin begs off and goes home, Tomas starts dancing with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a schoolteacher who’s friends with some of the movie’s crew. When the party moves to someone’s apartment, Tomas and Agathe have sex.

Tomas is eager to tell Martin all about it the next morning, and Martin tries to dismiss the affair as Tomas’ usual post-production dalliance — a release of sexual tension, nothing that will destroy their marriage. When Tomas insists he’s really in love with Agathe, the marriage starts its slow disintegration, even as Tomas tries to continue his life with both partners.

Sachs — who has probed the fragility of romance, gay and straight, in such movies as “Love Is Strange,” “Keep the Lights On” and “Forty Shades of Blue” — isn’t shy about showing the nitty-gritty of Tomas’ relationships with either Martin or Agathe. Tomas’ interest in both of them is primarily sexual, so it’s the sex scenes (which initially earned the movie an NC-17 rating, which Sachs’ producers returned) where Tomas’ passion is most abundant. Tomas connects with each of them best when making love; when he has to talk to them, not so much.

The performances are what cement the emotional weight Sachs and his regular writing partner Mauricio Zacharias try to convey. Whishaw (known to American audiences as Q in the Daniel Craig Bond movies and the voice of Paddington Bear) portrays Martin as a homebody but no wallflower, while Exarchopoulos (best known for “Blue Is the Warmest Color”) gives Agathe a down-to-earth quality that Tomas can’t quite fathom.

But it’s Rogowski, so compelling in Christian Petzold’s “Transit” and Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life,” who fascinates here. His Tomas is a rat bastard at times, self-centered and seeking pleasure at all costs, but there’s a bruised soul inside that bad behavior that makes “Passages” a must-watch. 

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‘Passages’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 18, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably NC-17 for explicit sex scenes, and language. Running time: 91 minutes; in English, and French with subtitles.