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I don’t know about anyone else, but I thank my lucky stars every day that we happen to be living in a period in which there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to queer content on both the big and the small screen. I recently had the chance to view Passages, the highly-acclaimed new romantic drama from Ira Sachs. Strange and sharp-edged and filled with rich and textured performances, it’s a caustic look at the way a marriage can fall apart remarkably quickly. 

When the film begins, Tomas and Martin (Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw) have been married for an undisclosed amount of time, living in Paris. Tomas is a mercurial and persnickety film director, while Martin is a sharp-eyed and soulful printer. It’s clear from the beginning that not all is well with the couple, but things really hit the skids when Tomas begins an affair with Adèle Exarchopoulos’s Agathe, after which he leaves Martin to move in with her. However, the bonds between the two men are not so easily shaken off, and the film elaborates on the complex and toxic dynamic among the three leads. 

I’ll admit that it was the presence of Ben Whishaw that drew me to this film in the first place, and I was not disappointed. He imbues Martin with a certain calm grace, exuding his usual low-key charm. One of Whishaw’s great strengths as an actor is his ability to be both vulnerably wounded and yet surprisingly durable all at once, and that is exactly what makes him so perfect as Martin. Though Martin knows what kind of emotionally manipulative man-child Tomas is, he can’t quite bring himself to detach himself, not even when his husband leaves him for a woman and he has another young man, novelist Amad (Erwan Kepoa Falé) ready and willing to pursue a romance with him. Such are the ties that bind. 

The drama largely unfolds over a series of vignettes, and though some might find the film’s narrative a bit disjointed, to me this is a reflection of Tomas’ character and the chaos he creates everywhere around him. Though he seems to be a prickly perfectionist when it comes to his filmmaking practice–the opening scene has him raking an extra over the coals for how he enters a scene–in his personal life he careens from one love affair to the next. Agathe represents a new kind of adventure and excitement that is clearly lacking in his relationship with Martin but, as he later admits, he simply can’t help but love being with men. 

Beneath all of the mania there is a surprisingly tortured soul, and it’s to Franz Rogowski’s credit that he imbues Tomas with a remarkable depth. Every now and again one gets a glimpse of the sensitive and confused young man lurking under the surface, a person who doesn’t quite know what he wants and so seeks out affection wherever he can get it, no matter how much emotional detritus he leaves in his wake. Tomas might be a man, but he still has the mentality of a frightened little boy, someone who doesn’t quite know what he wants; he just knows that he wants something. Numerous scenes draw our attention to his powerlessness, none more so than the one in which he has a tense conversation with Agathe’s parents, neither of whom quite know what to do with this young gay man who has gotten their daughter pregnant. 

As Passages makes clear, life is a messy thing, and love is even messier. By largely eschewing the outside world and focusing instead on the fraught dynamics among the three points of its ménage à trois, it allows us to get a more nuanced understanding of their motivations. Of the three, Exarchopoulos’ Agathe is probably the most enigmatic, but it’s still easy to see why Tomas would be so drawn to her. As a teacher she’s used to dealing with people with little to no emotional maturity or impulse control but, ultimately, this is precisely what leads her to spurn Tomas’ efforts to win her back once Martin (rightly) throws him out again, this time permanently. She realizes what she should have known from the beginning: that Thomas will never be able to give her the sort of romantic fulfillment she desires. He is a man-child, and that is all he will ever be. 

Of course, the sexual ingredient just makes things that much messier for everyone involved. The film was threatened with an NC-17 rating in the US, thanks in no small part to a very anal sex scene between Martin and Tomas. Those who continue to insist that sex scenes are almost always extraneous to the plot, should watch this film to see why this is not always the case. The sheer power of the intimacy here shows us, in a way that exposition or a fadeout never could, how much the relationship between Tomas and Peter is deeply, viscerally physical. These are two men who understand one another’s bodies in a way that no one else can. It’s also worth pointing out how rare it still is to see gay male sexuality depicted so forthrightly in the movies (though TV has been more forward-thinking in this regard, thanks to series like the rebooted Queer as Folk, Looking, and Fellow Travelers). This isn’t sex for mere titillation; this is sex as narrative, and the film is better for it.

There is, ultimately, something more than a little despairing about Passages, and it’s the kind of film that asks you to sit in your discomfort. By film’s end Tomas has left two lives shattered–among other things, Agathe has had an abortion–but it remains unclear whether he’s learned any valuable lessons. In all likelihood, he’ll continue barrelling through his life, creating more and more emotional chaos. However, while we might not approve of his actions, I personally found it impossible to dislike him. He’s just another sad and aimless young man, trying to find his place in the world.

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