If you’ve heard one thing about Ira Sachs’ new film Passages, it’s probably that it earned an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association. Many have pointed out that the film, while frank about matters of love and intimacy, is neither prurient in intent nor really, in the big picture, all that racy. What the ratings board seems to have found so objectionable is that about half of the film’s sex scenes involve a gay couple.
“It’s a warning to other artists and filmmakers that if you create certain images, they will be punished,” says Sachs. “It’s a legacy of the Hays Code, directly created in the late 1920s by and for the Catholic Church to limit what is available to the public and what art is created.”
During the days of the Hays Code, Memphis was notorious for the strictness and arbitrary nature of its censorship board. But what’s so frustrating to the filmmaker about the whole affair is that he never intended for Passages to be a film remembered for its sex scenes. “It’s not about sex,” says Sachs. “I mean, sex is part of the story. But I wanted to make an actor’s film — a film that, for me, recalled certain kinds of cinema. I think particularly of [John] Cassavetes, and also of the French New Wave, which were actor-driven and really about what happens between people in the moment. I think about [Cassavetes’] A Woman Under the Influence, but I also think about [Jean-Luc Godard’s] Contempt. It’s just this kind of thing that is monumental, which gets lost in the kind of neutered space of contemporary American cinema, where there are no humans. I mean, the number-one movie in America is about a doll!”
When we first meet Tomas (Franz Rogowski), he is working with a difficult actor on the set of a new film he is directing. He is demanding of the people around him, but also seemingly unsure of exactly what he’s looking for. These are recurring themes for Tomas as he navigates his relationship with his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw). When a young woman Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos) catches his eye during the wrap party, Tomas sends Martin home and hooks up with her. The next morning, he returns home to Martin, exclaiming, “I had sex with a woman last night!”
This will not be the last tone-deaf moment from Tomas, who spends the rest of the film ping-ponging between his two lovers, wrecking lives in the process. “I recommend to your readers to go on YouTube and type in ‘Franz Rogowski Chandelier,’” says Sachs. “You’ll see a karaoke performance that you’ll never forget. That was, to me, the inspiration to write a film for Franz. He’s a purely cinematic form who takes great risk and great danger and isn’t scared to make himself look bad. We talked a lot about James Cagney making the film because I think, similarly, he’s someone who creates a performance of a man behaving very badly, but done so beautifully.
“I wrote the film for Franz, and then I needed to find actors who were similarly brilliant and also alive and comfortable with risk and failure. That’s what I found in Adèle and Ben. Failure is really important in the creation of an interesting piece of work — the possibility that you’ll get a pie in your face. I think what this film is for me is, you’re given the opportunity to see people who are comfortable sharing some part of themselves that is the most personal and the most vulnerable. Interestingly, Adèle said the most difficult scene for her was not either of the sex scenes she’s in, but the moment when she sings a song to Tomas, which was a moment where she felt very, very exposed.”
Tomas is the latest in a long line of Sachs’ characters who could be described as toxic narcissists, such as Rip Torn’s indelible performance as a Memphis music producer in 40 Shades of Blue. “I resist those terms, which have become too generalized,” says Sachs. “It’s a character who’s not uncomfortable with taking up space, and also who believes that the rules of society are not necessarily made for him. … I think that there’s been a continual interest since I started making work in trying to understand what men with power do with it and what are the consequences.”
Passages opens Friday at Malco Ridgeway.