Passages has a great introduction.  Film director Tomas (Franz Rogowski) orders actors around and painstakingly focuses on someone’s inability to walk down a flight of stairs.  As Tomas shows the actor how to walk down the stairs, it becomes very obvious that Tomas wants to be idolized.  He does this by being intimidating to get what he wants.

This power trip feeds into Tomas’ overall desire to have control.  His careless curiousity leads him to an unexpected hook-up with an alluring woman, Agathe (Blue Is the Warmest Colour breakout Adèle Exarchopoulos), which bothers Tomas’ committed partner Martin (Ben Whishaw, the contemporary voice behind Paddington Bear).  This is the straw that ultimately breaks the camel’s back for Martin, but Tomas doesn’t take him seriously.  Instead of showing concern, he persists with both relationships, though the potential for romance is more forthcoming with Agathe.

After disappoining audiences with missed opportunities in 2019’s Frankie, director/co-writer Ira Sachs (Love Is Strange) has an assured hit on his hands with Passages.  The screenplay, co-written by Arlette Landmann and frequent collaborator Mauricio Zacharias, often feels like the Coles Notes of these featured relationships.  However, while the gaps take some adjusting to, these openings allow the three primary actors to build on their individual characterizations.  Instead of belabouring the issues that are caused by Tomas’ ego, Passages provides sufficient entry points for the audience to successfully survey the emotions at play;  feelings that are perfectly portrayed by the cast.  Though Sachs occasionally gets too wrapped up in the on-screen intimacy resulting in sex scenes that could’ve been edited down (an issue that likely caused the MPAA to originally give the now-unrated movie an NC-17 rating), his directorial decisions benefit these personal arcs within narrative.

Tomas is an unsavoury character with infectious behaviour, which may make Passages a difficult film to recommend to those looking for an “easier” time at the movies.  But, Passages makes a brilliant case about how the medium can be used to dissect a bothersome personality like Tomas’.  By no means does the movie reward a character that offers so much material, but Passages shows viewers how they can gain a personal education from a character study like this and, in turn, build more caution towards similar suspicious etiquette they may encounter in the future.

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Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie