The married gay couple Tomas and Martin, who reside in Paris and have been in love for a very long time, are the subject of Ira Sachs’ French romantic drama film “Passages,” which depicts their intense love story. Tomas, on the other hand, is unable to resist the temptation and begins an impulsive affair with a young teacher named Agathe, jeopardising his holy marriage.
The movie, starring Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adèle Exarchopoulos, offers a wise examination of the complexities of modern relationships. Love triangles and gay relationships, two major topics of the film, are seldom uncommon in real life, so it is only reasonable to wonder whether or not “Passages” is based on genuine events. In any situation, you can relax knowing that we’ve got you covered.
Is Passages a True Story?
To be clear, “Passages” is not based on a true story. Instead, the narrative was created by two screenwriters, Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, who used their creative concepts, specialised knowledge, and excellent writing abilities to create the intimate and captivating screenplay for the love triangle movie. After watching Franz Rogowski, who portrays the egotistical film director Tomas in “Passages,” in Michael Haneke’s “Happy End,” Sachs was inspired to create the romantic drama movie.
After leaving the theatre, Sachs reportedly decided he wanted to make a film for and about Franz. But the outbreak of the epidemic prevented him from executing his plan, leaving him alone and anxious about the genres of films he valued. He and Mauricio, his writing partner, had witnessed the male-female love triangle in Luchino Visconti’s “The Innocent.” This construction delighted and enthused the two. They started with that as their base and grew from there.
In an early August 2023 interview with Moveable Fest, co-writer and director Ira Sachs was asked if his own formative years had any bearing on the decision to set the film in France. Sachs gave two arguments in his response. One, I have firsthand knowledge of Parisian life. I’ve had relationships there. For me, there were breakups. I’ve had sex there, I’ve cried there, so I feel really at ease having an emotional life there.
“During the pandemic, I felt a loss of intimacy,” Sachs continued. “So I wanted to make a film of intimacy and pleasure and the kind of film that I was worried might not exist after the pandemic – the kind of film that is why I got into making films.” He went on to say that because of his lifelong love of French movies, he had developed a strong recall for French films. They had a profound effect on his worldview, and he used that perception to inspire the writing of “Passage.”
In an interview with Indie Wire in the beginning of August 2023, Ira Sachs explained how he came up with the idea of a content homosexual man who is persuaded to begin a relationship with a beautiful young woman. “This movie is about a generation that doesn’t view labels in the same way that our generation does,” he declared. There are less rigid boundaries now than there were when I and you were younger.
When he wrote the screenplay, according to Sachs, he thought that the movie’s fundamental problem would be identification. When the actors stepped into their respective roles, the identification branding disappeared though because it did not correspond with who they were. Given the aforementioned factors, it is obvious that ‘Passages’ is still fiction even though it may have been influenced by a few films and comparable true-life tales of love and tragedy.
