Passages

  With Passages Ira Sachs moves to the forefront of current American directors. (Memo to self: Go find his earlier films. Now.)

The narrative frame anatomizes Tomas Freiburg (Franz Rogowski), a German bisexual directing films in Paris. In the first scene he rudely directs a scene, especially nit-picking on a young actor who’s not descending the stars as the director wants. The film chronicles the director’s troubled descent off-(his)camera.

It ends on a full-screen profile of Freiburg bicycling furiously through the Paris streets. He has found he cannot control people in his love-life the way he directs them on film. As he cycles he’s incongruously wearing the tux and bowtie he donned to prepare to take his film to Venice. All dressed up but now nowhere to go. He’s furious because he has just been finally rejected both by the beautiful Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos) and by his husband Tim (Ben Wilshaw).,

The closing music is a cacophonous amplification of La Marseillaise. That cultural nationalism places the pug-faced hero in the grand tradition of French romantic film stars: Gabin, Belmondo, Depardieu. These unhandsome men had a romantic force that transcends our ordinary schmucks’ moral responsibility.   

The passages of the title refer to the growth of the lovers who come to reject Freiburg. As Tim notes, Tomas tends to fall into an affair upon completing a film. Now he’s hurt by Tomas insisting on describing his Agathe passion to him. Tomas leaves Tim, impregnates Agathje, then turns jealous at Tim’s new affair with a black stud novelist Tomas persuades Tim and Agathe to attempt to manage a trois. Feeling marginalized, Agathe asserts her independence with an abortion.  When Tim orders Tomas never to see him again the Venice honour pales before the director’s isolation.

The cyclist’s resolve and rage show he hasn’t learned a thing. He still tries to bend his lovers to his will, as if he ruled the set offstage as on. He storms into Agathe’s primary school classroom futilely to beg her to return, then extravagantly promises escapes of his desire not hers. He betrays both lovers by not telling Tim of Agathe’s abortion, to exploit Tim’s desire to raise a child. 

His two love-objects are considerable characters in their own right. Tim is a very successful designer, running a large company. If the woman is, as usual, cast in a lower register, Agathe is still an obviously effective primary school teacher. Either could carry their own film so Tomas’s dismissive treatment defines him not them.

Despite his role in the French screen tradition, Tomas is very much a modern lover. He is fully non-binary. There is contagious fervour in his bouts with Agathe. In his post-phallocentricity he gives her a manual orgasm. (Or in today’s parlance is it Digital?). His intercourse with Tim is the most graphic I’ve ever seen on screen. 

And that is the film’s point: Even in this most modern sexually enlightened male there remain a selfishness and drive for power that precludes his genuinely loving. Indeed it’s all in his name. The director has the voyeurism of the Peeping Tom but in his need for selfless submission in love he’s the Doubting Tomas. That costs him the frei (freedom) in Freiburg. That last cycle through France is his solitary confinement.