Passages

Director: Ira Sachs

2023

28 May 2025

See

Tomas (Franz Ragowski) is a film director; controlling, sexy and seductive in his self-assurance. He’s a German living in Paris with his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw), an Englishman and designer, who while supportive doesn’t want to stay out and dance at a wrap party. On the dancefloor Tomas meets Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos), a young French primary school teacher. You can feel their frisson and pursing it Tomas blows up his life, but tries to control the chaos. 

Think

The most modern relationship dynamics since Patrick Marber’s Closer, adapted by Mike Nichols. Polyamory and Ethical Non-Monogamy are not new ideas, but seeing how Thomas switches between what he needs emotionally from Martin but physically from Agathe is both compelling and unsettling. Especially when Agathe becomes pregnant and Thomas tries to bring them all together like one big love family, reminiscent of the manipulation of Pablo Larrain’s Ema. 

Feel

There’s something about Franz Ragowski, I recall seeing him in Victoria directed by Sebastian Schipper, but it was a cinephile friend who recommended this film. Then again Lee Pace’s The Fall rerelease interview with MUBI where he articulated Ragowski’s allure in his choices and dancing. 

“Here's an actor I find, like, incredibly inspiring right now, Franz Rogowski. I find him so enigmatic. I could just watch the scenes he does again and again and again, because the psychology behind his eyes, the freedom he feels in front of the camera when he's like moving and dancing. I mean, I find him absolutely hypnotic. And I found his films on Mubi, one of the reasons we signed up and subscribed to it because to see passages and then to see, you know some of his other filmography. I mean, I find him phenomenal”, Pace says. (at 5.05)

Ragowski moves like a club kid he must’ve been in the Berlin techno scene. The drama is seeing other people’s emotions then finally Tomas’s as he tries to hold it all together as it falls apart. Slowly at first, then all at once. And how he picks himself back up, gets back on his bicycle, and rides on.