Passages

A mildly humorous relationship drama about a narcissistic bisexual indie-film director who begins an affair with a woman despite being married to a man, who happens to be his court actor. This gives rise to a bizarre situation in which the main anti-hero fights tooth and nail to hold on to his relationship with his life partner, while also being determined to continue his affair with his mistress and promising to start a family. The film is remarkable due to the fact that we follow its plot mostly from the perspective of a self-centred and self-pitying character who is simultaneously unbearable and charming, and whose insolent and supremely unempathetic behaviour increasingly escalates to absurdly comic levels. The result is an entertaining spectacle involving an unusual love triangle, focused on a caricature of a toxic man without a trace of self-reflection, but other than that character’s escalating inappropriate actions, it offers only poorly written supporting characters and excessive emphasis on explicit physicality in the bedroom scenes. (18.07.2023)