“Passages,” The Sexy Crucible of Art and The Heteronormal Detriment.
The tear in the gender space continuum of romance is pulled apart further by Ira Sachs’s maliciously curious puppet.
The cinema has seen the destruction of relationships at the hands of hetero-designed closeted homosexuals time and time again. Usually the virus of stereotype overpowers the vocality of queer representation. An alpha male leaves his family for a flamboyant bar goer, thus selfishly ruining his children’s lives and shaming his beloved wife to a lonely life of wine bottles and child support. A gay athlete get’s ostracized by his teammates once they uncover his taste for meat. A high school boy get’s too curious for a gay bully who’s internalized the weight of the world in homophobia. The gay interest is always pinned as selfish and never true. It is rare to see a man’s affair be hetero and against a gay relationship, while it’s typical the male is villainized for partaking in secretive gay entanglements. In Ira Sachs’s “Passages,” the beautifully damned, tortured & torturous, steamroller of a character, Tomas (Franz Rogowski), suffers the tear of heart between subconsciously wanting the societal implicated norms of a hetero relationship while being a fluid lover in a gay marriage.
The film opens on the scene of Tomas’s work, a militaristically run film set with actors adorned in lavish silks, furs, and extravagant makeup. He is closing a film, and the intensity is palpable. After successfully wrapping yet another surefire movie, he and his crew go out to celebrate. At the club, he is loose, he is hungry, and he is licking his ego. Tomas’s husband Martin (Ben Whishaw) is there as well, but he is not feeding off of this high and he leaves Tomas and his fruits to dance alone. Parallel to their disbandment, a female character named Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos) bluntly disregards her partner and is looking for a source of freedom. This is when Agathe and Tomas collide, and an erotic point is plotted on Tomas and Martin where the segment of Agathe grows.
A female presence invites the storyline of Tomas to pivot. While there is no prenotion that Tomas is solely gay, he is married to Martin, but the existence of one thing implies the existence of its opposite. This unwavering, unregretful, unbothered attitude Tomas wears after having sex with Agathe is blinding at first. All of his choices, to immediately and eagerly go tell his husband he slept with someone else let alone a woman, his choice to sleep with her again, his choice to delegate his time towards Agathe more than Martin all feel red hot absurd at first. Though, as the plot thickens and the dynamics between the three individual lovers grow eyes and limbs, there is a silent and somber sympathy for Tomas starting to develop.
Humanly so, his love travels between two people, two bodies. It’s the shared timing and relational expectations that make these interactions so ugly, so unfortunate. As Tomas falls into a deep and lustful love with Agathe, he entertains the possibility of fatherhood, something that wasn’t readily available while primarily with a man. He learns the massivity of a woman’s love. He experiences something different, for once something that’s new. Though ‘for once’ can grow tired, Tomas craves the familiarity and intimate touch of his husband Martin. During the film, one problem presents itself and Tomas see-saws between his lovers, dissecting what each of them had to offer and picking at the pieces. He finds his body being racked with sobs in the hold of Martin whenever his own actions overwhelm him, and he finds himself crawling into Agathe’s bed to sleep in her near maternal embrace. Tomas’s curiosity turns to a vicious downward spiral of casual cruelty resulting in both of his partners to develop an enmity for him.
Both of his desired realities start to crumble around him when Tomas goes too far, impregnating Agathe and showcasing the child to Martin, entertaining the idea of a family to both of his lovers. In these chaotically fast-paced scenes, Agathe and Martin are barely characters in the film, for Tomas’s unravel dominates most of the dialogue and cinematic atmosphere. The two of them and the tug-o-war child turn into an aftermath. Tomas has burnt them to exhausted ashes, and their defeat blows them away in the wind.
It’s no shock to the sympathetic system that Tomas is left alone at the end of it all. Crimson lights glare across his face as he coasts on his bike since he has nowhere or no one to call home, almost representing the metaphorical and literal blood he has on his hands. He got caught in the crossfire between monogamy and fluidity, a queer existence and the oblivious yearn for heteronormative safety, and his own ego and ability to love. While Tomas is rightfully painted as our villain after toying with two humans who loved him, pushing Agathe to the point of aborting her dream child, and inserting his threatening presence where it’s not wanted, his demise is one our hearts should break for. To be left alone in the ruin of one’s own confusion and indecision is one of the most human, most gay, experiences of them all.
