GLR November-December 2023

FILM

The Wages of Narcissism

L IKE PASSAGES , Ira Sachs’ latest film, his 2014 film Love Is Strange had a gay couple at its center. But while the earlier film featured a longtime pair of sympathetic aging men (John Lithgow and Alfred Molina) living apart under forced economic circumstances, Passages focuses on two

he and Martin are drinking as dance music prompts folks to pair up. Tomas first asks Martin to dance, but Martin, a cool cus tomer in Whishaw’s emotionally reserved performance, declines. Tomas turns to Agathe, a dark beauty with a voluptuous figure, and they take to shimmying on the dance floor. They wind up at her place for

A LLEN E LLENZWEIG

PASSAGES Directed by Ira Sachs SBS Produc ti ons

a night of hot sex. Arriving late next morning at his and Martin’s apartment, Tomas casually shares the news of having slept with Agathe and wants to talk about it. Martin isn’t having any of it. What starts as a spontaneous affair soon finds Tomas moving in with Agathe, which encourages Martin to invite Ahmad (Erwan Fale), a handsome Black man, into his life. While the time elapsed between episodes is not always clear, we see that Agathe was initially suspicious of Tomas’ too quick avowal of “falling in love” with her. “You say that a lot, I imagine,” she re marks. Tomas assures her, “I say it when I feel it.” Agathe shrewdly counters, “You say it when it works for you.” Martin

thirty-something married artists who prosper on the cultural cut ting edge, with an apartment in Paris and a modest retreat in the country. One of them, Tomas (Franz Rogowski), a film director originally from Germany, experiments sexually with a woman, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and, finding satisfaction in the adventure, matter-of-factly informs his British husband Martin (Ben Whishaw) of this episode. So begins an exploration of today’s rather cool, perhaps even cruel, sexual mores. The trilingual story proceeds with plot twists and character turns that keep us guessing as to who will end up with whom and where Sachs’ emotion-driven plot is headed. Tomas is the story’s engine, setting in motion psychic

understands his husband’s behavior as part of pattern. We come to understand that Tomas’ direct expressions of his needs and feelings is also a form of manipulation. He doesn’t always ap preciate his own motives or impulses, but it seems this display of selfish naïveté serves him well. When Agathe invites her parents to meet Tomas at a dramatic moment in their relationship’s progress, the audi ence squirms through Sachs’ wonder fully staged set piece of the awkward first encounter between family mem bers. Running late for the planned in troductory luncheon, Tomas arrives by bike, his trusty mode of local transit, wearing a sheer form-fitting midriff baring top. This surprises Agathe’s solid bourgeois father, who extends his arm for a manly handshake. Tomas has to readjust and quickly changes his

Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw in Passages .

outfit for the luncheon table. Agathe’s father and mother (Caro line Chaniolleau) try to feel out Tomas’ intentions vis-à-vis their daughter, who is pregnant by Tomas, but the queer artist-bo hemian chafes at being interrogated, despite the mother’s obvi ous attempt to maintain a tone of curious inquiry as she seeks precision about his recently ended gay marriage. In short, it’s the in-law introduction from hell. The route to the film’s ending is unexpected. If Sachs avoids pat psychological explanations, his characters plumb the mores of our contemporary moment, when standard sexual identity la

eruptions that jangle this particular triangle. The movie opens with him directing his actors in a scene set in a bar. Something in his no-nonsense and abrupt manner, as he instructs one actor to repeat, and repeat, walking down a flight of stairs, reveals Tomas as both professionally decisive and socially ruthless. He is the authority who states what he wants frankly yet without the niceties that might cushion the blow. Tomas encounters Agathe at his movie’s wrap party, where Allen Ellenzweig, a longtime G&LR contributor, is the author of George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye (Oxford Univ. Press, 2021).

TheG & LR Continued on page 48

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