New dilemmas for actors and artists hired for — and limited to — their social identity
The performers in Ira Sachs’s Passages try living up to the new demands of identity politics. German actor Franz Rogowski, British actor Ben Whishaw, and French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos portray an unlikely bisexual triangle in the modern Paris art scene. Filmmaker Thomas (Rogowski), graphic designer Martin (Whishaw), and hanger-on Agathe (Exarchopoulos) exhibit the wayward sexual impulses symptomatic of today’s gender confusion. Despite past inclinations apparent as each character is introduced, their new involvements take on reckless, politically fashionable attitudes.
Sachs directs the actors — all best known for specializing in homosexual-based portrayals — so that they must also navigate versions of themselves in a couple of graphic sex scenes. This is a problem for the audience as well as the filmmakers. We’re stuck with a story that feels shapeless, almost improvisatory, as if taking on social trends under the pretense of seeking authenticity.
This is a major problem for contemporary film culture in which actors are hired for their social identity and limited to it. Gay actors are bamboozled into invasive, distasteful postures the same way black actors are bamboozled into defensiveness. They are forced to find their way through politicized stereotypes according to the era’s fashion — where their humanity and creativity have been traduced and politicized.
The title Passages (mocking Gail Sheehy’s 1970s lifestyles best seller) must refer to transience. Relationships without commitment. Meaningless actions. Sachs and company have given in to political license and given up the expressiveness of art. Floundering without traditional morality, Passages presents inconsistent, empty characterizations. Sachs ignores the sensuality of attraction. Despite Agathe’s voluptuous figure in a blue silk dress, Thomas stimulates her almost gynephobically, whereas during detailed coupling with Martin, his dirty feet dangle in the air. This sexual realism is repulsive, unlike Boaz Yakin’s Aviva, a romantic bisexual ballet. Even the original British TV series Queer as Folk explored similar situations more convincingly — back in 1999, before those life choices became political footballs.
In Passages, each character acts out a sociopathic sex life in half-conceived scenes about obnoxious people who don’t know themselves yet intrude on the intimacy of others. Agathe’s pregnancy gives Thomas and Martin a chance to play at parenthood. Then her abortion lets the gay men revert to pre-Obergefell type.
This desolate view of hapless people is extreme, consistent with Sachs’s interest in sexual compulsion (The Delta, Keep the Lights On), but it also smacks of humorless, radical progressivism. Pedro Almodóvar’s self-critical Pain and Glory was also emotional, erotic, and funny, with a wonderful, fully fleshed performance by Antonio Banderas and a range of lovers holding on to their humanity. But instead of bringing his characters close, Sachs brandishes topicality: After Thomas and Martin’s last squabble over infidelity, Sachs features a West Hollywood rainbow-flag poster that blares,“No More Abuse of Our Rights, Dignity,” “Police Officers Not Storm Troopers,” “Blue Fascism Must Go,” and “Stop Illegal Search and Seizure.”
Those slogans are clearer than the relationships in Passages. These progressive libertines are miserable yet smug. Sachs salutes their headlong independence in the closing sequence where his camera tracks alongside Thomas’s bicycle ride across Paris. It’s also smug, recalling Woody Allen running through New York streets at the end of Manhattan but without the Chaplinesque payoff. Sachs has not perceived or created recognizable people in Passages but is selling politicized sexual types — perhaps, ultimately, a misperception of homosexuality. It’s like an adult version of Disney’s grooming agenda. Is this a harbinger of social propaganda to come?