Ira Sachs on Passages: 'I really just wanted to make a film about intimacy'

In his new love triangle movie Passages, Ira Sachs sets out to chronicle adult relationships in all their messy and sexualised glory. Interview by Alistair Harkness

It’s been 16 years since US filmmaker Ira Sachs last visited the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Back then he was still relatively early in his career, promoting his third feature, Married Life, having broken through a couple of years earlier with his Sundance-winning sophomore effort 40 Shades of Blue. “I have some nice memories,” says Sachs when we meet over Zoom to discuss his imminent return with his new film Passages. “I don’t know who’s running it now, but it was an interesting group of people at the time."

In the years since, Sachs has quietly become one of the more radical and boundary-pushing directors on the arthouse scene. Like Claire Denis, he’s one of the few filmmakers left who’s still interested in chronicling actual grown-up relationships in all their messy and sexualised glory, be it the impact of addiction on a casual relationship (Keep the Lights On), the economic implications of marriage for an ageing gay couple (Love is Strange) or the awkward class dynamics of a New York neighbourhood on the verge of gentrification (Little Men).

Passages continues that trend. Set in France against the backdrop of the film industry, it revolves around Tomas (Franz Rogowski), an obsessive German filmmaker whose somewhat open marriage to graphic designer Martin (Ben Wishaw) starts unfurling when he begins an affair with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), the teacher-friend of a crew member he meets at the wrap party for his latest film.

Adèle Exarchopoulos and Franz Rogowski in Passages

The movie kicks off on the final day of shooting the film within the film (which shares its title with Passages), though that’s not a cue for another meta movie about filmmaking. “I really just wanted to make a film about intimacy,” says Sachs. “But I also wanted the world to be accurate. By establishing from the first moment Tomas’s profession and the way he works, we know an enormous amount about him.”

Indeed, as we see Tomas obsessing over how an actor walks down a flight of stairs – giving him passive-aggressive notes, his frustration mounting with every take – we see someone who not only needs to be in control of everything, but is also a little toddler-like when things don’t go his way. The remainder of the movie plays out during the post-production phase of Tomas’s film without ever returning to it – a smart move that allows Sachs to draw a sharp contrast between the off-screen autonomy the character has over his film in the editing room compared to the on-screen chaos of his personal life to which we're privy. “Tomas is a man who has a job that gives him power in the world, and understanding what he does with that power was something I was interested in,” nods Sachs.

What makes it fascinating is the electrifying turn from Franz Rogowski at its core. The star of international hits Victoria, Transit and Undine, Rogowski is one of the rising stars of European cinema. As it turns out, Sachs wrote the part for him. “I saw him in Michael Haneke’s Happy End. There’s a scene where he does a karaoke performance to Sia’s Chandelier and I was just fascinated by this animal of cinema.” (You can see it on YouTube. It’s quite something.)

Part of the reason the film works so well, though, is that Tomas’s wildness and petulance is balanced out by making Wishaw’s and Exarchopoulos’s characters similarly rounded. Wishaw’s Martin, for instance, isn’t the meek, sexually neutered character he at first appears. Similarly, his performance might be an eye-opener for those who only know Wishaw as Q from the Bond films or as the voice of Paddington, but the versatility he’s displayed in leftfield fare such as Lilting and Surge is very much in evidence. “He’s a very modest presence,” says Sachs, “but when he’s acting he becomes very precise."

Franz Rogowski and Ben Wishaw in Passages

Likewise, Sachs describes Exarchopoulos – who broke through a decade ago in the controversial Blue is the Warmest Colour – as someone who’s simultaneously down-to-earth yet also a movie star. “She’s unattainable, yet familiar,” he says. “She reminds me of someone like Jean Moreau.”

So all French-set movies featuring love triangles eventually come back to Jules et Jim?

Sachs laughs. “Yeah, I think that’s probably true. I mean, that film wasn't the one I thought about most, but it certainly was one I thought about.”

Because of the frank nature of the sex scenes in Passages, the films Sachs went back and looked at were ones where depictions of bodies and sex weren’t off limits. He reels off a list that includes Chantel Ackerman’s Je Tu Il Elle, the 1981 German cult film Taxi zum Klo and the work of Visconti, Pasolini and Godard. This was cinema that really allowed Sachs to see how far can you take things on screen in terms of portrayals of sex, which has, once again, become a heated topic in the industry, with sex all but disappearing from mainstream cinema. Has he noticed a creeping prudishness in the way films are made and received?

Adèle Exarchopoulos and Ben Wishaw in Passages

“For me, you know, [cinema’s] a place in which you realise that things don't progress in one direction. It's not like everything always gets more free or more liberated. In fact, I would say we're in a time when things are less liberated.”

He does, however, think there’s been an important and necessary change in the way sexual intimacy is captured on screen.

“What seems to me more important to change is not what we depict, but how the people behind the camera use their position to create those images. Choices can be made by an individual about what they want to show and what their boundaries are and that's what I feel very comfortable with. With my actors there's a trust that they know I won't break and I think, really, the change of #MeToo is really saying that directors do not have the right to break the trust of their performers. I feel my responsibility is to really understand what my actors are comfortable with, and then make something out of that.”

Passages screens at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 19 and 20 August and is on general release from 1 September.