Film Review: Passages is an absorbing tale of an unusual ménage à trois

Franz Rogowski and Adèle Exarchopoulos in Passages

• Passages
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

Being a control freak goes with the territory when you’re a film director, but Tomas (Franz Rogowski) tends to embrace chaos once his latest movie is in the can.

Set in Paris, Passages (16s) opens with the ‘terribly self-involved’ Tomas embarking on a torrid affair with Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos), which does not go down well with Tomas’ long-suffering partner Martin (Ben Wishaw), who is, unsurprisingly, not really interested in hearing Tomas’ account of the ‘exciting, different experience’ of making love to a woman.

Written by Mauricio Zacharias, Arlette Langmann, and Ira Sachs, with Sachs directing, Passages is an absorbing, transgressive tale of a rather unusual ménage à trois, which benefits hugely from the characterisations of Martin, Agathe, and Tomas — where we might expect overwrought emotional extravagance, instead, we get characters who are matter-of-fact about their highly unusual love triangle. 

That’s not to say that everyone is equally happy about the situation, and Ben Wishaw, playing the fulcrum of the relationship, is in terrific form as the self-effacing English ex-pat who does his best to keep calm and carry on. 

All three leading performances are strong, for that matter: Tomas might be an emotional whirling dervish, but Franz Rogowski gives Tomas’ narcissism a deliciously deadpan reading, while Adele Exarchopoulos’s Agathe is simultaneously stoical and vulnerable as a woman who finds herself inadvertently breaking up a long-standing gay partnership. 

The heart wants what the heart wants, as they say, and Passages brilliantly tests the strengths and fault lines of relationships both new and established.