Passages

After finishing his latest film, filmmaker Tomas eagerly begins a passionate romantic relationship with a young schoolteacher, Agathe. For Tomas, being with a woman is an unfamiliar and exciting experience that he is eager to explore, despite his marriage to Martin. But when Martin begins his own affair, the fickle Tomas shifts his focus back to his husband. An Ira Sachs film with a perfect cast: Adèle Exarchopoulos (L'amour ouf, Revenir), Franz Rogowski (Happy End, Transit), and Ben Whishaw (Bright Star, The Lobster). "The film is irresistible at every moment, but Sachs also constructs, with breathtaking grace, a narrative arc firmly rooted in reality and believable for these three characters at a crossroads. Misaligned desires and expectations can be funny, but they can also be devastating, and what could have been a reassuringly banal comedy of manners about people experimenting with different lifestyles turns out to be a bittersweet tale of high hopes, amazing sexual encounters, painful disappointments, and difficult decisions." (Elena Lazic on cineuropa.org, March 23, 2023)