Despite my absence, it's not as if we haven't still been seeing films on a regular basis this summer. While lacking motivation to keep writing about them, there have been a few good ones. Among them are the big hits of the season: Oppenheimer and Barbie. Since everyone within reach of the Interwebs has talked about them, I don't think it serves much purpose to join the crowd. Suffice it to say that Oppenheimer was a Chris Nolan film, with his style all over it, and a great representation of a very complex man. Similarly, Barbie was excellent; extremely well-written and with obvious themes that still didn't continually beat you over the head with them. In faux irony, the funniest thing about the film was that, despite those themes, the person who stole the show was Ryan Gosling as Ken. Anyway, if I get any feedback to this stuff at all, maybe I'll go into more detail on one or both of them, but I feel like there's not much more to be said that hasn't already by far bigger names than mine. In contrast, what did feel compelling was our most recent viewing, which was tonight of the French film, Passages.
Those of you that have been reading my stuff for a while (all four of you) will likely remember that I'm not generally a fan of French cinema. It often strikes me as complicated for the sake of being so and emotionally detached while presenting as emotionally overwrought. There have been exceptions over the years, as films like Blue is the Warmest Color are among my favorites. That film, in fact, is what led me to be interested in Passages, since the female lead is Adèle Exarchopoulos, who was also one of the leads in BitWC. Also like that film, Passages is another examination of modern LGBTQ+ relationships, where Tomas (Franz Rogowski) and Martin (Ben Whishaw) are a married couple in Paris until Tomas begins an affair with Agathe (Exarchopoulos) and things get complicated. That's a very simple story that, as you might expect, is quite character-driven; mostly by Tomas who is the chaotic spindle upon which all the other threads are twisted, mostly to their chagrin, continual or eventual. It sounds like something that me, the story guy and the not-really-fascinated-by-French-film guy, wouldn't be a fan of. But I was the only person of the three of us walking out of it with a positive reaction.
What sold me is the humanistic portrayal of the characters and the fact that none of them shied away from the reality that love, in many cases, makes people stupid. (Moreso than usual, in any case.) It becomes a fairly humorous story, but not because it's played for comedy. The gasps of frustration in the audience at Tomas' actions were easily audible. The humor instead arises from the shock that not only could he keep doing these outrageous, selfish, destructive things, but that Martin and Agathe kept coming back for more. That's what love often does to you and I appreciated that co-writer (with Mauricio Zacharias) and director, Ira Sachs, kept driving that point home. He didn't expect anyone to approve of or understand the decisions made by any of the main characters. He just presented them as realities because, to many of us, they have been (and sometimes still are.) Story Guy is also fond of characters that are humans first, roles second, and all of the characters in this story fit that description. It's not entirely beyond the realm of reason that Sachs put some of himself into Tomas, a filmmaker in this story, as well. As much as some think that injecting oneself into one's characters is a natural progression, it takes a certain level of bravery to expose oneself in that fashion, too, which potentially makes this story that much more interesting.
In a similar fashion to the big hits of the summer, I think Passages is well worth the watch. I doubt it will have as broad an appeal as those films, but I don't think it was intended in that fashion, either. It's peculiar and will have an attraction to those of peculiar tastes, which just may describe why I can't get any traction by writing for a living, either.
