Passages: In a Love Triangle, Man Takes a Walk on the Bi Side

By Chris Knight

Rating: A-

Sometimes, the moving parts of a movie like Passages are so simple you could express them as an algebraic equation, thusly: (A+B) + C = A + (B+C). But also: B+C = D

In English? Married couple Martin and Tomas meet single woman Agathe. Tomas falls in love with her and decides to leave Martin. And then Agathe gets pregnant by her new lover.

Simple on the page, oh so complicated in the heart. To begin with, Martin (Ben Whishaw) is initially quite muted in his response to the announcement by Tomas (Franz Rogowski) that he’s fallen for someone new.

One senses that he’s always been the keel in the relationship, balancing the emotional swings of his mercurial partner. Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos) may be the biggest wave to hit them thus far, but she’s probably not the first.

And what a fascinating character is Tomas. When we first meet him in the opening scene, the German film director is yelling “Cut!” in order to berate one of his cast for walking down the stairs in the wrong way.

So right away we’re given the Coles Notes version of his character: temperamental, demanding, selfish. Director and co-writer Ira Sachs never erases that initial sketch, choosing instead to cleverly add to it. You’ll probably never like Tomas, but you’ll feel for him — sympathy in some moments, fear in others, as when he’s distraught and driving or cycling through Paris traffic with no concern for his own safety.

Meanwhile, everyone else is jostled by his orbital perturbations. Martin starts seeing someone new but can’t quite bring himself to cut Tomas out of his life completely. And Agathe doesn’t seem to know quite what to make of her new partner.

The meeting-her-parents scene is a study in squeamishness, the awkward encounter — “You were married when you met our daughter? To a man?” — not helped by the fact that Tomas shows up to their tidy Paris apartment (A) late and (B) wearing a cropped mesh top, looking like he’s just come from a club, the kind in which Agathe’s folks wouldn’t be caught dead.

Sachs has explored some of these dynamics before. Married Life (2007) dealt with infidelity and selfishness (to the point of murder!), while Keep the Lights On (2012) gives us another bisexual love triangle, with a filmmaker as the lead once again.

Both those were excellent, which is why his last film, 2019’s Frankie, was such a letdown, coming across as a pastiche of late-career Woody Allen in all the worst ways: sunny European locales, sprawling cast, just-so plotting.

But he’s righted himself with this one, which feels messy and raw and real. The film is set in the present but eschews texting and even phone calls for the most part, giving it a late-20th-century feel.

It’s mostly in French with subtitles, but the characters switch between English and French as needed. (Whishaw has spent several years in France and is semi-fluent.)

Even better, the screenplay knows when it’s best to not have them speak at all, as in the scene in which one character is sitting on a bed, silently listening to two others make out in the next room.

Sometimes, in equations of the heart, you can solve for X. And sometimes it remains stubbornly, soul-stabbingly unknown.

Passages. Directed by Ira Sachs. Starring Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adèle Exarchopoulos. In theatres August 11.