Passages

What an unlikable lead character. And that's a Best Actor performance according to the New York Film Critics? I don't get it

beautiful cinematography

I got hooked up from the beginning and loved the performances. I strongly recommend it.

This was almost unwatchable. 20 minutes before the end I said out loud (I was watching it by myself) "Jesus christ, this is unbearable when will it end??!". The main character is grating - I mean, he's supposed to be unlikeable, and he definitely is that. But all the characters are fairly one dimensional and the script is shite. Give it a miss.

You'll find that there's a love triangle in the centre of this movie. I didn't understand the motives of the characters. So the guy's partner finds out that his cheating on him and they both end up agreeing that they want a child via a female's egg. Having accepted this, the partner then invites another guy into their place, whom he begins to have an affair and is trying to cut his man off, reasons is perhaps the movie wants to make these characters unthinkable so they rush into things then end up wounding themselves. The narrative could have done without that gutty stuff, allowing it to be smart and sharp moving. At the end there's a reveal that the lady aborted their unborn child and this leads to a breakup between the two men as if they ever had worked things out together to begin with.

Beautiful and well-acted, Passages is ultimately a portrait of another shallow, destructive a-hole. Yay.

It was beautiful to look at and the acting was good. I just didn't see the point of it? I wanted to care but came away feeling I didn't get it.

In Ira Sachs' very European film, a gay couple, Franz Rogowski's German director Tomas and Ben Whishaw's British printer Martin, living in Paris meet Adele Exarchopoulos's French school teacher Agathe at the wrap party for Tomas' latest film. Tomas ends up sleeping with Agathe and in fact soon declares to Martin that he has fallen in love with her. From this point on, the film begins its deliberately paced progression towards… something, but quite frankly what I'm not entirely sure. Scenes often go on longer than necessary, imbued with silences that seems pregnant with inscrutable significance and the film is an exercise in underplayed emotions, subtle inferences and baffling reactions. This could've been a portrait of an uber-modern three-way marriage in a new sexually fluid and label-busting world but what it actually is in the end is a character study of Rogowski's unsympathetic Tomas, where the screenplay often confuses his childish petulance and narcissistic arrogance for artistic temperament, whilst providing little sense of redemption or even self-awareness comes its very typically European ambiguous ending. This is Arthouse with a capital A and whilst it has intriguing elements that's potentially ripe for exploration and dramatization, I never feel it getting a firm grip around them. I wouldn't fault the solid performances here and the central trio of actors bravely go where they're directed to go whether it's explicitly graphic sex scenes or challenging wardrobe choices that not everyone can get away with. However I suspect it's the material that let them down. Straddling drama and comedy and not knowing where to land on, scenes are left in limbo unsure whether to play it for laughs or for more serious dramatic effect in a film that bemuses, bores and frustrates me in equal measures.

Ben Whishaw is the highlight of this movie. What a great performance.

Beautiful film, the performances and storytelling are dynamic and sophisticated.