Passages Reviews
The scene when Adèle Exarchopoulos sings to him is sensual and beautiful, with a sublime connection to Mia Hansen-Løve’s or Claire Denis’s cinema.
Full Review | Apr 17, 2024
In the end, whether you - or, for that matter Martin or Agathe - love or hate Tomas or not is irrelevant, Sachs suggests, as he’s the sort whose freewheeling momentum will carry him forward no matter what.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 16, 2024
I usually admire Sachs’ dramas at a distance, but this one got its hooks in me.
Full Review | Mar 18, 2024
Filled with affecting intimacy and some of the best (and essential) sex scenes in recent memory, Passages is one of Sachs’ absolute best films and further solidifies the exemplary status of the three lead performers.
Full Review | Original Score: 9.5/10 | Feb 29, 2024
Franz Rogowski’s central performance [is] beguiling.
Full Review | Feb 13, 2024
(Rogowski commands) every second of a movie that is itself powerful, painful, and complex.
Full Review | Feb 8, 2024
The miracle of Rogowski’s performance is that we sympathise with his plight as selfishness comes home to roost, while also finding comic delight as he scrambles to avert his downfall.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 7, 2024
Ira Sachs’ Passages is less interactive and more observational, looking squarely at the moments of transition in one’s life.
Full Review | Jan 19, 2024
An affair between a heterosexual woman and a homosexual (perhaps bisexual) man looks very shaky from the beginning and it leads a number of entirely predictable conflicts.
Full Review | Original Score: B | Jan 17, 2024
Both disarming and engaging...
Full Review | Jan 16, 2024
Passages boasts the most fascinatingly loathsome/compulsively watchable character in a film since Mike Leigh's Naked.
Full Review | Jan 5, 2024
Josée Deshaies’ cinematography uses ingenious framing and blocking techniques to emphasize the torrential emotional interiority of the characters in every scene.
Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jan 1, 2024
A passionate, exquisitely-performed film about a charismatic man and the people trapped in his orbit ... [and] a delightful example of characterization through costuming.
Full Review | Dec 31, 2023
Caustically amusing, sexy, sad and unflinchingly intense, this is an intimate study of the formation and collapse of a romantic triangle, played with an invigorating absence of sentiment by three actors at the top of their game.
Full Review | Dec 13, 2023
Ira Sachs is a master of the small, delicate gestures that wind up having seismic repercussions in our lives. In Passages, which might be his masterpiece, he fashions the most delectably ruinous of love triangles.
Full Review | Dec 9, 2023
A brilliantly acted and sparingly composed film that succeeds in bringing this extraordinary issue politely to the screen with real emotional intelligence. This is unquestionably Sachs’ best film to date.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 9, 2023
Passages is for people who appreciate unapologtic authenticity in its storytelling. It smolders, discomfits, and captivates from beginning to sad end.
Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Nov 2, 2023
Passages is beautiful because it focuses on an individual that, at his core, is ugly. Even still, Sachs is able to find a human core that’s radiant within all of it, warts and all.
Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Oct 30, 2023
A film that is profoundly real, impactful, and even uncomfortable, but above all, is an artistic and complex story about three people confronted with their own sense of morality. [Full review in Spanish]
Full Review | Oct 5, 2023
Passages is a punk movie against an absurd Puritanism: sex turns into a vital way of understanding needy and broken characters who would give it all to feel a little real affection. [Full review in Spanish]
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 19, 2023